


A History

by SteRhubarb



Series: An Archive [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Grief, M/M, MWPP, Memories, Non-Linear Narrative, OotP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-02-06 02:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 28,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12807714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteRhubarb/pseuds/SteRhubarb
Summary: “If I were a girl, ‘or something’?” James repeats, just to double check he has heard the question correctly. “Would I think thatRemuswas…?”“Was sort of-” Sirius tries to shrug casually, but James sees right through it. “-handsome. Or something.”





	1. Jan '81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe I’m just trying to get my end away a bit before I shuffle off this mortal coil?”
> 
> Lily pulls a face that says, so succinctly, ‘ _please do not take me for a fool who doesn’t notice the way you moon at Remus from across every room you both occupy together_ ’.

January 1981

Lily jumps up off the floor, and as always, both James and Sirius are bewildered and admiring of the litheness of her.  
  
  
They watch her stalk into the kitchen, past where they hover in the doorway, and begin preparing another pot of tea without magic.  
  
  
Sirius turns back to James, whose gaze still lingers on her, lovingly.  
  
  
“Why don’t you marry her?” Sirius laughs, and James finally looks away to smirk.  
  
  
“Can’t. She’s already married,” he huffs, playfully. “And I hear he’s a right stud, too.”  
  
  
“Too bad, mate. Peter’s probably got a friend he can hook you up with, though.”  
  
  
“Who, Moony?”  
  
  
“He’s already married, as well. His fella’s hard as shit, too.”  
  
  
James barks a laugh.  
  
  
It dies quite quickly, though, as he ponders Sirius’ words.  
  
  
“Would you want to do that, do you think?” James asks suddenly, acutely serious in his question. “With Remus? If you could, like?”  
  
  
Sirius shuffles his feet as he thinks, or pretends to think about it. It’s actually something he’s put an embarrassing amount of thought into ever since James and Lily were engaged.  
  
  
“What, would I want to see Moony walk down an aisle in a white dress?” he mocks.  
  
  
“I’d have thought you would be the one wearing the dress, if I’m completely honest.”  
  
  
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve got the legs for it better than him.” Sirius nods, jokingly solemn.  
  
  
James rolls his eyes, but chuckles.  
  
  
They go quiet again, and James can see that Sirius is still thinking about it.  
  
  
“So, yes, then? You’d want to?” he pries.  
  
  
“What are you on about?”  
  
  
James shoves at him with a shoulder. “If it was common, you know, and no one batted an eye?”  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head and looks at James like he’s lost his marbles, but his eyes go a bit shifty and it sort of says it all, really, James thinks.  
  
  
Sirius is rescued from having a final answer pressed out of him when Harry cries loudly from the main room.  
  
  
James pats Sirius on the shoulder to stand down on this occasion, and moves away to go get Harry.  
  
  
Lily slips out of the kitchen as he passes and doesn’t even pretend to have not been listening. She smiles with all of her teeth at Sirius, who has to plant a hand over her face to diminish the beam of her smugness.  
  
  
Lily laughs and swats away his hand.  
  
  
“God, you’re so sappy when you’re around Harry” she teases, and Sirius begins to turn away to escape, but Lily clamps her hands around his forearm and tugs him back in.  
  
  
“You love him,” she beams. “Do you love him? You do.”  
  
  
“Shut up now,” Sirius mutters, trying to tug himself away, although not particularly forcefully.  
  
  
“Oh my god, you love him,” Lily says in a reverent voice, but then immediately amends herself. “Of course you love him.”  
  
  
“Maybe I’m just trying to get my end away a bit before I shuffle off this mortal coil?”  
  
  
Lily pulls a face that says, so succinctly, ‘ _please do not take me for a fool who doesn’t notice the way you moon at Remus from across every room you both occupy together_ ’.  
  
  
Sirius quells under such a gaze, and drops his head back against the doorframe with a thud.  
  
  
He groans loudly, and Lily presses her face into his arm to muffle her squeals of delight.  
  
  
They hear James begin to plod towards them from the other room, so Sirius shrugs his arm out of Lily’s grasp.  
  
  
She lets him go, but throws in a cheeky bum smack before slipping away back into the kitchen.


	2. Aug '78

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus pulls his hand away. “What? Bullshit!”
> 
> Sirius gives Remus a look with raised eyebrows, full of a sort of pity that says, _Ahh, what a sweet, naive idiot_.

August 1978 

“Fucking hell,” James sighs, exasperatedly, upon rounding the corner to find Sirius on his knees in front of Remus.   
  
Remus, whose head a second ago was pressed back against the wall with a hand covering his own mouth - probably in an attempt to muffle himself from the ears of the Order meeting currently going on in one of the other rooms - balks and shoves Sirius’ head away from his crotch.  
  
  
“Ow, Remus,” Sirius huffs, sitting back on his heels and frowning up at James like he’s the biggest inconvenience he’s ever laid eyes on. “Look, it’s-”  
  
  
“Not what it looks like?” James offers. He’s looking at them a little frustratedly, but there’s also the hint of a smirk in the corner of his mouth.  
  
  
“Yes,” Remus says desperately, and Sirius snorts, before asking James, “Why, what does it look like?”  
  
  
James squints incredulously and points from Sirius, on his knees, to Remus, failing to subtly zip up his fly. “Like you’re sucking Moony off in the middle of the corridor.”  
  
  
Remus groans “oh my god” at exactly the same time that Sirius says “spot on, mate.”  
  
  
“You’re both fucking pushing it, having it on in the middle of a bloody hallway when they’re five minutes away from finishing in there,” James chides, leaning against the wall next to Remus and reaching into his coat to steal one of his cigarettes.  
  
  
“That’s all right, _he_ was less than a minute from finishing,” Sirius nods up at Remus, grinning.  
  
  
Remus gives him daggers back, and although James rolls his eyes, he chuckles.  
  
  
Remus wraps his arms around himself and sighs heavily through his nose, before noticing James has put a cigarette in his mouth.  
  
  
Remus snatches it back out and it accidentally crumples in his hand as he does so.  
  
  
“Lily will kill all of us if she finds out you’ve smoked that; you, for smoking it, me, for letting you rob it, and _him_ ,” Remus points a foot at Sirius, “for buying them for me in the first place!”  
  
  
James groans. “I _need_ it after _that_ load of bollocks!”  
  
  
“Now you know why we left to come here,” Sirius agrees, getting up from the worn carpet. Remus puts out a hand to help him.  
  
  
“They’ll be changing their minds about it soon enough,” Remus says confidently. His cheeks are still red with embarrassment and he can’t meet James’ gaze, but he seems eager for something else to talk about than what just occurred. “It’s obvious the last three unsolved Muggle-born killings are related to it, and there’s not a whole lot of us. They’re going to _have to_ utilize us soon.”  
  
  
“Naah, you didn’t hear that last bit,” James grimaces, “they’re closer to persuading groups of magical creatures to get involved than getting us to do it.”  
  
  
Remus narrows his eyes. “They said that? That they’re looking towards magical creatures?”  
  
  
“They’re ‘in talks’,” James nods grimly.  
  
  
“That’s exploitation, surely?” Sirius chimes in, a note of outrage in his voice. “Oh, ‘ _preserve our precious youth, but send any old_ beast _out to do the dirty work_ ’!” he mocks. “Cheeky bastards.”  
  
  
At that moment they hear the sound of a door opening and a multitude of pairs of feet shuffling towards exits or in search of lavatories.  
  
  
“It won’t work,” Remus continues, but then the three of them are forced to shift against the wall and go silent as a very old witch passes them.  
  
  
He clears his throat once she’s out of earshot. “It won’t work because anybody we send to speak to them; they’ll view us as an organisation, the same as they see the Ministry.”  
  
  
Sirius nods. “Yeah, like the bunch of arseholes that they are.”  
  
  
“You two should have left your illicit activities until later. You could have done with saying that in there, to their faces,” James sniffs.  
  
  
He moves off the wall now and leads them to leave.  
  
  
“You’ve got a mouth, haven't you?” Sirius says.  
  
  
“Yeah, but I can be heard better when there’s three of me,” James throws a frown at Sirius over his shoulder.  
  
  
“Yeah, all right,” Sirius concedes. “Next time.”

  
**********

“James knows,” Remus says later that night. He sits down at the table opposite Sirius, clutching his sandwich on its plate with a frighteningly tense grip.  
  
  
Sirius tries very hard not to spray crumbs as he laughs.  
  
  
Remus watches him with unveiled irritation and sighs as it turns into a coughing fit, spurred by almost choking a corned beef sarnie.  
  
  
He waits patiently and then Sirius looks at him with wide eyes.  
  
  
“Uh, _yeah_ ,” he says. “No shit.”  
  
  
Remus looks scandalised.  
  
  
“Is this because of this afternoon? Because,” Sirius reaches over to put a reassuring hand on Remus’ wrist, “I’m sorry to break it to you, Moony, but he knew _ages_ ago.”  
  
  
Remus pulls his hand away. “What? Bullshit!”  
  
  
Sirius gives him a look with raised eyebrows, full of a sort of pity that says, _Ahh, what a sweet, naive idiot_.  
  
  
“Really?” Remus deflates. He’s usually the one giving Sirius that look. His sandwich goes flopping onto his plate like a metaphor for his illusion of propriety.  
  
  
And then, being what Sirius will claim to be the stupidest question Remus has ever asked in his life, says, “ _How_?”

 


	3. Nov '80 & Sept '74

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dumbledore’s words! It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I sound like, like…” Sirius ruminates for a moment, and Remus can see from about a mile away and with 20/20 vision, what he’s going to say next..
> 
> “Don’t say James Bond,” he grumbles, a fraction of a second before Sirius talks over him.
> 
> “- _James Bond!_ ”

November 1980  


Sirius downs the dregs of his tea, coughs on the loose leaves, and then gets up from his seat.  
  
  
“Right then, I’m off,” he tells them all as he pulls his coat on.  
  
  
Remus almost forgets to stop tipping his tea into his mouth before moving it away, and narrowly avoids a lap full of boiling water.  
  
  
“What? Where?” he asks.  
  
  
James doesn’t look surprised at the news, and Peter hasn’t even looked up from the newspaper, so he feels a bit like a plonker being the only one to not know.  
  
  
“I have a _mission_ ,” Sirius says, revelling in the sound of the word. “From the Order. Didn’t I tell you? Dumbledore issued it.”  
  
  
“It’s not a _mission_ , it’s just a job,” James mutters, obviously jealous that Sirius gets to go out on official Order business, even if it turns out to just be cleaning some bins.  
  
  
“Dumbledore’s words! It’s brilliant, isn’t it? I sound like, like…” Sirius ruminates for a moment, and Remus can see from about a mile away and with 20/20 vision, what he’s going to say next.  
  
  
“Don’t say James Bond,” he grumbles, a fraction of a second before Sirius talks over him.  
  
  
“- _James Bond_!”  
  
  
Peter laughs loudly, finally looking up and adding to the conversation after twenty minutes silently pouring over the paper. “You _wish_ you were James Bond! Driving those amazing cars and getting all of those women - _phwoar_!”  
  
  
Sirius squints down at Peter before flapping a hand at him. “Cars? Women? You’re missing the point of Bond, mate - it’s about the action!”  
  
  
At this declaration, he suddenly dives onto the carpet, does a sort of sideways roll and then lands on one knee holding his hand in the shape of a gun.  
  
  
“Right, Moony?” He’s pointing his hand-gun at Remus and pulling a face that insists that the feat he just attempted is worthy of praise.  
  
  
Remus hopes desperately that his face hasn’t gone red and makes a weak sound of uncertainty. “Um,” he says, trying to be nonchalant, “I think I agree with Peter. He does get an awful lot of women and that’s always good.”  
  
  
Peter looks smug and Sirius’ hand-gun goes limp as he sighs loudly and clambers up from the floor.  
  
  
James’ gaze, however, lingers on Remus with an amused expression. He  watches Remus taking a pathetically sly glance at Sirius who is walking towards the door, and  James is forced to roll his eyes.

 

  
**********

 

 

Sept 1974  


 

“You know, if you were like a girl or something,” Sirius says, completely out of the blue one afternoon, “ _hypothetically_ a girl, or something, would you think Moony was, like, maybe a bit of all right?”

James stops writing and lowers his pen very slowly onto the desk.  
  
  
They’re in an abandoned classroom plotting a very intricate prank that involves roles, and a schedule, and Sirius to fold fifty origami cranes by hand.  
  
  
He’s knocked out about thirty-six by the time he poses his hypothetical, and is currently pretending that number thirty-seven is so very challenging, purely so that he doesn’t have to make any sort of eye contact with James.  
  
  
“If I were a girl, ‘or something’?” James repeats, just to double check he has heard the question correctly. “Would I think that _Remus_ was…?”  
  
  
“Was sort of-” Sirius tries to shrug casually, but James sees right through it. “-handsome. Or something.”  
  
  
“I wouldn’t know, Padfoot, because I’m not a girl,” James says carefully, and then adds, watching Sirius, “ _or something_ .”  
  
  
“No, well, I’m not a girl either,” Sirius says, and then very pointedly stops there.  
  
  
James folds his arms in front of himself and waits patiently.  
  
  
The silence really stretches out as he stares at the side of Sirius’ face, who puts forth a commendable attempt to make origami look like it’s rocket science.  
  
  
He finally finishes the twenty-seventh crane and places it very delicately on the end of the table, before sliding his gaze painfully slowly across to James.  
  
  
He’s wearing a knowing expression that Sirius wants to cover up with his hands so that he doesn’t have to witness it, and he can feel himself starting to go red and get a stomach ache.  
  
  
“What?” he asks, somewhat hostile.  
  
  
“Sirius,” James says firmly, “do you want to get into Moony’s pants?”  
  
  
Sirius looks outraged; his eyebrows shoot up and practically merge with his hairline, and he gawps, like he’s lost for a response to such an accusation.  
  
  
“It’s fine,” James sighs, exhausted already by the dramatic display, and puts a hand out to shut Sirius’ mouth for him. “I get it. You’ve answered the question. Calm down, you bloody drama queen.”  
  
  
At that, Sirius dives from his seat and tackles James to the ground.  
  
  
They salvage most of the cranes that are crushed under their play-fight, and Sirius employs Peter later that evening to make up the numbers for the few they lost.

 


	4. Feb & May, '75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m talking to Erica, actually. You just happen to be here, too. Carry on straightening your little pencil case if you don’t want to listen.”
> 
> “Fuck off, Sirius,” Remus says sharply, and Erica jumps a little in her seat to hear Remus swear so forcefully.

February 1975

“Your turn, Moony,” James says, turning to Remus and handing over the crafty fag they’ve all been taking puffs from on their lunch break up in the Owlery.  
  
  
Peter turns from his spot in the doorway, from where he’s telling any students venturing up that ‘ _there are no owls at the moment, sorry, come back tomorrow_ ’, and looks dubiously at Remus, who buys some time by taking a long, slow drag from the cigarette.  
  
  
He passes it on to Sirius, who waits to hear his answer before taking his own puff.  
  
  
“I guess, well, do you know Amber, in Transfig?” Remus says, meeting no-one’s gaze.  
  
  
James mutters a ‘yeah’, and Sirius grunts the positive, while Peter nods from the entryway.  
  
  
“It’s just that she’s got hair like, like _gold_ , and I sit next to her every lesson and I just, I don’t know, I just want to... put my hands in it.” Remus scoffs at himself and quickly looks around at them all, a little desperately. “Is that really strange?”  
  
  
James pinches the bridge of his nose at the same time that Peter starts chuckling in the doorway.  
  
  
For his part, Sirius gives Remus a look of exasperated understanding, and puts a hand on his shoulder for comfort.  
  
  
“Moony, I’m sorry nobody has taken the time to explain this to you yet, but you’re a teenage boy, in the midst of adolescence, and wanting to run your hands through a girl’s hair is probably the mildest of desires any boy has ever admitted to. It’s, actually, rather disappointing. You’re in for a shock in the next few years if you think _that’s_ a weird fetish.”  
  
  
Remus somehow does actually feel a little better at hearing that, albeit also a little condescended to, but then he was always the one out of them to be a slower when it came to girls.  
  
  
James reaches over and gives Remus a gentle shove in the shoulder in lieu of voicing that he thinks Remus is a complete berk, and then says, “Right; Padfoot.”  
  
  
“Hang on,” Remus says, “so what do you lot think about, then?”  
  
  
“Boobs,” Peter says, almost immediately. “Obviously.”  
  
  
“ _Eyes_ ,” James says, giving Peter a sideways glance. “But, yeah, what Pete said as well.”  
  
  
“I guess,” Remus shrugs, then looks to Sirius, who is pondering very hard on this particular question.  
  
  
“Mouths,” he says finally, without looking back at Remus.  
  
  
“See, Moony, it’s natural. We’re all horny little bastards, and it’s completely normal to fixate on weird things.” James claps once as if to declare the end of that line of conversation, then turns on Sirius again. “Padfoot, you were about to tell us who you fancy?”  
  
  
Sirius looks up and gives James a forceful glare. He quickly then remembers the cigarette in his hand, and fumbles with it to prevent being burned.  
  
  
“If you’re interested in Erica Pittley, I think she likes the way you turn around all the time in Hist' to talk to her,” Remus offers.  
  
  
Sirius coughs on the drag he has just taken. “I’m not talking to _her_ , I’m talking to _you!_ ”  
  
  
“Oh,” Remus says. “Well, I think she fancies you, anyway.”  
  
  
“ _Great_ ,” Sirius mutters.

 

  
  
**********

  
May 1975 - [3 months later] 

 

Something hits Sirius on the back, and when he looks down there is a quill by the back leg of his stool. He picks it up and turns to find Remus leaning forward on his desk, very obviously frustrated that his quill just dropped off the end.  
  
  
Sirius sort of half-chucks it back onto the desk for him and quips, “watch out where you’re putting your stuff.”  
  
  
“I thought you were ignoring me,” Remus says shortly, lining his quill up with the end of the desk, purely so he has something to pretend to be focusing on.  
  
  
They've been on like this for almost two full days now, and Remus seems to be holding it up better than Sirius.  
  
  
He huffs, leaning over the back of his chair and tries not to look at Remus with an air of nonchalant disregard. “I’m talking to Erica, actually. You just happen to be here, too. Carry on straightening your little pencil case if you don’t want to listen.”  
  
  
“Fuck off, Sirius,” Remus says sharply, and Erica jumps a little in her seat to hear Remus swear so forcefully.  
  
  
“I’ll fuck off if Erica wants me to, and you’ll have no say in the matter,” Sirius snaps.  
  
  
He is sort of angry, mainly about the fact that Remus is angry, so he hopes it will distract from his face, which has begun to flush at hearing a curse come out of Remus’ mouth.  
  
  
“Oh, _now_ you’re interested in her!” Remus bites back.  
  
  
Erica herself is blushing, and looking a little uncomfortable, but neither of them has taken a glance at her. She looks between the two of them, stunned by their disagreement, where usually they’re the best of friends and tries to intervene.  
  
  
“Erm, I hope you’re not arguing over me-” she starts, but Remus rounds on her with a look so full of irritation that she closes her mouth, immediately realising this is not about her at all.  
  
  
“You can take my seat and sit right next to her then,” Remus says to Sirius, beginning to snatch up his belongings from the desk and shove them into his bag.  
  
  
When they’re all in he stands up and throws it over his shoulder roughly.  
  
  
Sirius is startled out of his anger, and makes to ask where he’s going, but Remus speaks first.  
  
  
“You can tell Binns I’m ill, I don’t care.”  
  
  
He storms out of the classroom and Sirius is left gaping after him.  
  
  
Slowly, he turns to look at Erica, but she, too, is giving him a rather scornful look.   
  
  
With an exhaustion borne from being on the receiving end of several people's anger, Sirius hauls himself out of his seat, picks up his bag, and shuffles hurriedly out from behind his desk.   
  
  
He thinks it's only right to mutter a ‘sorry’ as he passes by Erica, but he doesn't much care if she hears him or accepts the apology.  
  
  
Out in the corridor, he catches the back of Remus disappearing around a corner, and gives chase.

 

 

*****

 

Sirius bursts into the dormitory and trips on the rug in his haste to get to James’ bed. Luckily, he grabs hold of Peter’s bed hangings at the last moment and they prevent him from face-planting the ground, although they do also tear significantly.  
  
  
James, reclining on his own bed, watches silently as the scene plays out in front of him.  
  
  
It takes a moment of untangling, but Sirius eventually clambers noisily up onto Peter’s bed and then stumbles over to James looking dazed and completely out of breath.  
  
  
“...Everything good?” James asks calmly.  
  
  
Sirius stands at the end of the bed and his mouth sort of flaps, but he’s stuck for words, and no noise comes out.  
  
  
“You can do charades if you prefer,” James offers, but Sirius shakes his head vigorously and points at his chest to indicate that he just needs to get his breath back.  
  
  
James has time to realise he’s a little chilly, go in search of a jumper underneath his bed, and pull it on, all before Sirius is ready to speak.  
  
  
“You will not _believe_ what just happened to me,” Sirius says, very slowly and loudly for emphasis.  
  
  
“We’ll see,” James says, dubiously. “Go on, then.”  
  
  
Sirius holds his arms out to either side. This is to show the magnitude of the situation he is about to lay out.  
  
  
“ _Remus Lupin_ ,” he enunciates.  
  
  
“I’ve met him,” James nods, and Sirius scowls before continuing.  
  
  
“I repeat; _Remus_ _Jonathan Lupin_ -”  
  
  
“Think it’s just John, mate, but get to the point.”  
  
  
“ _REMUS, ‘MOONY’, LUPIN_ ,” Sirius takes a very deep breath, laughs shortly, and buries his hands in his hair. “Only went and fucking kissed me just now.”

 


	5. Oct '74 & May '75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Merlin on a bike,” James sighs heavily. “You gave me a fucking heart attack.”
> 
> Sirius look down at his best friend affectionately. “I’m not _that_ much of an idiot.”
> 
> “You are, and it’s a constant burden to us all-” James is saying when, at the very same moment that Sirius launches himself on top of James to tackle him, Remus enters the dormitory and throws his bag on the floor beside his bed.

October 1974 

It’s past curfew and the common room is deserted but for Remus and Sirius on the sofa in front of the fire. James, who had snuck to the kitchens for a glass of warm milk for Remus in his post-moon exhaustion, re-enters and stands at the end of the sofa.  
  
  
Sirius is lying with Remus tucked between his body and the back of the couch, his head on Sirius’ chest and sound asleep.  
  
  
Sirius opens his eyes when he senses James approach and raises his eyebrows as if to say, _look at this new development_.  
  
  
James smirks and puts the glass down on the side table before folding his arms with what Sirius feels is an air of smugness.  
  
  
“He’s completely fucked,” Sirius whispers, and then in some sort of attempt to defend himself, says “he would’ve fallen asleep on anyone.”  
  
  
James grins wider. “ _You’re_ fucked!” he hisses back. “Look me in the eye and tell me you think he would’ve fallen asleep on Pete.”  
  
  
Sirius makes a valiant attempt, but crumples under James’ piercing gaze and has to press a hand over his mouth to suppress a laugh.  
  
  
“All right, but he’s only having a nap, not signing his name on The Gay Register.”  
  
  
“Signing his name beneath _yours_ on The Gay Register?” James laughs, and Sirius tries to kick out at him, but Remus weighs him down and prevents it.  
  
  
The motion does, however, stir Remus somewhat, and he groans wearily as he begins to sit up.  
  
  
“ _Now_ you’ve done it,” Sirius says, and James quickly reaches for the milk to placate a groggy Remus.

 

 

  
**********

 

 

May 1975 

James’ eyes portray a combination of shock and disbelief, and he doesn’t speak for a long time.  
  
  
Sirius starts to get fidgety and paces up and down the side of the bed.  
  
  
“Are you sure?” James finally asks, and Sirius practically screeches to a halt beside him.  
  
  
“What the fuck does ‘am I sure’ mean? Are you asking, did I accidentally mistake the pressing of his lips, very enthusiastically against my own for a- a- _what?_ A spontaneous practice of his resuscitation technique?” Sirius exclaims, flapping his arms and generally making a return to frantic.  
  
  
“Well, you haven’t told me how it all happened,” James yells back, suddenly caught up in it, despite himself.  
  
  
“He was angry at me,” Sirius starts. His hands are back buried in his hair like he’s trying to squeeze the memory out of his brain.  
  
  
“Of course he was,” James mutters, because he can’t help himself at that, either.  
  
  
“I thought it was about Erica Pittley, which it was, but it wasn’t.”  
  
  
James shakes his head. “You’re not making sense, get to the part where he kissed you.”  
  
  
“Yeah!” Sirius shouts, as though James has hit the nail on the head. “It _didn’t_ make sense! That’s what I’m saying - one minute he was telling me to fuck off and leaving class, and the next minute we were in the corridor and he was calling me insufferable and sticking his tongue in my mouth!”  
  
  
“His tongue?” James grimaces. “Did you like it?”  
  
  
Sirius is incandescent with incredulity. “ _‘Did I like it’?_  Prongs, I fucking _loved_ it!”  
  
  
“So you kissed him back?” James says, and then not to give Sirius a chance to call him an idiot, continues with, “And then, what?”  
  
  
“Then, _what?_ ”  
  
  
James narrows his eyes. “This happened _when_?”  
  
  
Sirius puts a hand on his hip and the pose strikes James as one of a person who doesn’t quite understand the question. He then slowly points a finger back over his shoulder, towards the door, and the realisation comes crashing down on James so hard that he crumples backwards onto his bed with his face buried in his hands.  
  
  
“Please don’t tell me you just ran straight up here to tell me,” he mumbles from his cocoon of disbelief.  
  
  
Sirius is unnervingly silent, so James rolls onto his side to reach behind himself with one hand and pull out a pillow. He launches it forcefully at Sirius’ head and there is a satisfying yelp.  
  
  
“Ah! What! _What?_ ” Sirius exclaims. “I didn’t tap out mid-way through, if that’s what you’re getting at. He’s gone to skive an authorisation note from Pomfrey to get out of class.”  
  
  
“Merlin on a bike,” James sighs heavily. “You gave me a fucking heart attack.”  
  
  
Sirius look down at his best friend affectionately. “I’m not _that_ much of an idiot.”  
  
  
“You _are_ , and it’s a constant burden to us all-” James is saying when, at the very same moment that Sirius launches himself onto the bed to tackle him, Remus enters the dormitory.  
  
  
He throws his bag down beside his four-poster, and then freezes when he sees Sirius pinning James down, shakes his head dismissively at them both, and turns around and leaves again.  
  
  
“ _Now_ you've done it!” Sirius growls, gives James a few digs to the ribs - which serve only to cripple him with laughter - and then clambers up off him to go chasing Remus out of a room for the second time in one day.

 


	6. Mar '76 & Dec '80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I definitely knew,” Peter says confidently, and all eyes in the room land on him with varying levels of disbelief. 
> 
> “Like fuck you did!” James practically yelps.

December 1980 

Sirius and James stand in the hallway clutching one another at the shoulders, bent double and laughing hysterically.  
  
  
There are gasps for breath and slaps on the back, and it all goes on for rather a ridiculous amount of time, Remus thinks, as he stands watching with disgruntled patience from the lounge.  
  
  
“-and I said ‘yeah, he’s known for ages!’, and he says-”  
  
  
“Sirius,” Remus groans.  
  
  
“-he says-”  Sirius has tears in his eyes.  
  
  
“ _What?_ ” James howls.  
  
  
Sirius almost hyperventilates in his attempt to finish. “He says, ‘ _How?’_ ”  
  
  
They collapse into hysterics again, and Remus leaves to make tea for himself.  
  
  
Fifteen minutes later, they’re all sat around drinking and Remus feels like a colossal berk as James unfolds the story of how he’s known since fourth year.  
  
  
“You don’t get any points,” Sirius says. “It’s not like I made any effort to hide it.”  
  
  
“No, but I did,” Remus admits.  
  
  
“ _Barely_ ,” Peter chimes in and everyone shuts up.

 

  
**********

 

March 1976

  
If somebody had told Sirius that _he_ would turn out to be the voice of reason in a conversation where the  sole two participants were Remus Lupin and himself, he would have scoffed himself into an early grave.  
  
  
As it goes, they are in the dormitory, alone for the time being, and Remus is trying to persuade Sirius to fool around.  
  
  
Despite many tactics that go down the route of trying to make Sirius lose his mind, and therefore the argument, he is putting up a rather valiant argument for not trying this in the middle of a communal dormitory during the afternoon.  
  
  
Hands are roaming and lips are very close but not quite touching. It’s all the things Sirius would normally be flat on his back for, but he insists his spidey sense are tingling - much to Remus’ chagrin - and he just can’t settle into it.  
  
  
Somewhere very far away in the castle, James and Peter stand in a passageway holding out a lit wand and the map.  
  
  
James has it folded to view the tower for purposes he forgot immediately upon noticing that Sirius and Remus were in fact in the dormitories, rather than in the kitchen and library, which is where they both told him they were going. Separately.  
  
  
He lifts his eyes to meet Peter’s and purses his lips.  
  
  
Peter worries that he’s supposed to gain some meaning from this, because if so then it goes completely over his head.  
  
  
“They’re at it,” James says plainly.  
  
  
Peter stares at him blankly, so he curls a finger over the edge of the map and plants it beside their names inside the dorm. They both sit neatly within a small box that denotes Remus’ bed, and James tries to give Peter another look that encourages critical thinking.  
  
  
“Sleeping?” Peter asks, and James wonders how it isn’t accompanied by the sound of air whistling as it passes in one of Peter’s ears and out of the other.  
  
  
“No, you _dolt_. You know… _it_ , or whatever!”  
  
  
Peter’s mouth opens, but he doesn’t look particularly surprised by the information. “Maybe they’re looking for something under Remus’ bed,” he offers.  
  
  
James is, frankly, _forced_ to do the one look where he squints his eyes and makes a person feel like a colossal idiot for even remotely contradicting him, because of course he’s right.  
  
  
It’s a very specific feeling from a very specific look, and Peter feels it run to his core.  
  
  
“Is this common from them, then?” Peter asks, and now that he thinks about it, James is rather impressed by the way Pete is taking the news that his two best friends are having it away in their collective bedroom right this moment, rather than hanging out doing their usual mischief.  
  
  
However, it is slightly overshadowed by the blatant lack of awareness that has resulted in his knowing nothing about what the map is demonstrating is currently taking place.  
  
  
“Yeah,” James nods at the wonder of his small, oblivious friend. “Yeah, it’s been pretty common for a few months now, mate.”  
  
  
Peter simply shrugs. “Didn’t notice.”

 

  
**********

 

  
“I definitely knew,” Peter says confidently, and all eyes in the room land on him with varying levels of disbelief.  
  
  
“Like fuck you did,” James practically yelps. “I _specifically_ remember telling you, and you saying ‘oh, I didn’t even notice anything!’”  
  
  
“Naah, I knew,” Pete sniffs, looking back down at the paper, and James is hard-pressed to look any more outraged.  
  
  
“I _literally_ had to point it out to you!”  
  
  
Remus, whose face has been buried in his hands for longer than he cares to keep track of, but long enough to start seeing fuzzy stars darting around behind his eyelids, groans at the loss of his dignity.  
  
  
“What, you spied on us?” Sirius asks, reaching over to rub Remus’ back where he slumps forward on the sofa. “Kinky.”  
  
  
“No, you perv, it just showed you both in the same place on the map and Pete thought you were  fighting or something,” James grimaces.  
  
  
“I think watching us on the map sort of counts as spying,” Sirius says.  
  
  
James laughs. “Well, in that case, I spied on you about a hundred more times. That’s what the map was made for doing, so really you only have yourself to blame.”

 


	7. May '75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You don’t know anything!” Sirius tells James forcefully, later that evening.
> 
> James laughs. “You wish! I know _everything_.”

May 1975

Remus fists a hand in the front of Sirius’ shirt and tugs him forward.  
  
  
He needs to shut him up and he needs to kiss him, so ‘two birds, one stone’ and all that, he thinks, and presses his lips very firmly against Sirius’.  
  
  
It’s like touching a livewire with his mouth, but as soon as Remus has moved away again, he has to go back in.  
  
  
It’s addictive, and it’s wet, and hot, and Sirius has put his hand on Remus’ neck, which has got to be a positive, because it’s certainly not a punch in the face, and now that it’s happening, he sort of wishes he hadn’t just called him ‘insufferable’.  
  
  
He _is_ , but perhaps saying it immediately before kissing him can be seen as sending mixed signals?  
  
  
It’s somewhere around the part where Remus begins getting the urge to push up against Sirius that he suddenly remembers they’re in a corridor, and then he accidentally shoves Sirius away a little too roughly.  
  
  
They both stand, panting and looking at one another wide-eyed and shaken. Sirius watches him expectantly, and Remus is hit with the terrifying reality that _he_ did this, and now it’s up to _him_ to explain himself.  
  
  
He clears his throat and picks up his bag - dropped, apparently, in his haste to put his hands on Sirius.  
  
  
“I’ll see you after, in the common room, I just need to see Pomfrey about a note to get out of class,” Remus lies smoothly, and Sirius eats it up with an eager nod and backs away down the corridor, like he can’t take his eyes off Remus.  
  
  
He watches Sirius go, smiling stiffly until he’s disappeared around the corner and then slumps back against the wall, practically gasping for breath.  
  
  
“ _Ohmygod_ ,” Remus breathes, and finds himself clutching at the crest on his jumper like his heart is about to pound right through his chest, the rate it’s beating at.  
  
  
“W _hat the fuck?_ ” he whispers to himself, being of the mind that it’s possible to sometimes shock yourself so deeply with your own actions that you require having a quiet word with yourself.  
  
  
With absolutely zero preparation and not even the hint of a week’s worth of mulling it over beforehand, Remus somehow clawed some guts up from somewhere and _kissed_ Sirius.  
  
  
The thought, even after the fact, is so terrifying that he isn’t sure he can move away from the wall without his legs completely giving out beneath him, and it takes a good five minutes for Remus to make any attempt to leave the passageway.

  
  
  
  
**********

 

  
  
Remus comes back to himself when Peter sits down on one of the comfy chairs nearby, and leans over to peer curiously into his face.  
  
  
“Are you alright, Moony? You look like you’ve swallowed something sharp,” Peter says, like a man who also, once upon a time, swallowed something sharp, and therefore knows what Remus is going through.  
  
  
Remus is grateful for the misdirected sympathy, but short of Peter putting a hand on his shoulder and saying, “ _I know you’re completely bent for Sirius and that you just did the teenage equivalent of throwing your heart up into his hand and then letting him walk away_ ”, he doesn’t have a clue how to respond.  
  
  
He’s wringing his hands in his lap, and his mouth has gone rather dry, but of course this is the moment Sirius sits down at the opposite end of the sofa.  
  
  
He eyes Peter warily, trying to work out if Remus has told him everything in the last minute and a half and he’s deciding whether to feel embarrassed or not in the face of someone who _knows_.  
  
  
This takes place amidst a rather awkward silence, within which Peter looks between the two of them, very obviously misinterpreting the whole thing.  
  
  
“Is everyone alright? You both look-” he begins, but Remus tuts loudly and tells him to shut up a little too sharply, so Peter offers to leave them to it and shuffles away.  
  
  
As he’s leaving Remus feels an instant regret that stems from not thinking things through, because now he’s alone with Sirius and it feels very, very dangerous.  
  
  
“So…” Sirius says lingeringly, and Remus nods, for some reason unbeknownst to himself.  
  
  
“Yeah,” he responds, but again, he has not a clue what he’s agreeing to.  
  
  
“History,” Sirius reminds him, kindly.  
  
  
“Yeah,” Remus says again. “I’ll have to get some notes from someone.”  
  
  
Sirius narrows his eyes at him, and Remus does a very impressive attempt of avoiding his eye contact.  
  
  
“ _Notes?_ Moony, we just snogged the living daylights out of each other, not ten minutes ago!”  
  
  
Remus definitely has a heart palpitation, that Sirius would talk about it so blatantly, but also there’s a small fluttering feeling in his stomach that he can’t place. It allows him to, just barely, look at Sirius.  
  
  
“We did,” he admits, but his voice shakes, and it’s hard to be stared at that way, so he looks away again.  
  
  
“I just thought that maybe we could do it again? A lot?” Sirius says, and again, Remus is both shaken and - God forbid - aroused by the frankness of him.  
  
  
He audibly gulps. “Did you tell James just now?”  
  
  
“Do you want me to tell James?” Sirius asks, and Remus shakes his head minutely, to which Sirius says, “then I won’t tell him!”

 

 

**********

  
  
“You don’t know anything!” Sirius tells James forcefully, later that evening.  
  
  
James laughs. “You wish! I know _everything_.”  
  
  
“No, no!” Sirius groans, trying to grab at his shoulders to shake sense into him, but he writhes expertly out of his hands. “You need to pretend you know nothing. I told Moony that I didn’t tell you!”  
  
  
James pauses. “Why did you say that?”  
  
  
“Because he asked me not to, but I already had, so…”  
  
  
“Ah,” James nods, but it’s a nod that distinctly says Sirius is a moron. “How long do I need to keep it up for?”  
  
  
Sirius shrugs.

 


	8. 1980, Feb '73, & Dec '76

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, eurgh, it’s all floppy!”
> 
> “Sirius, watch her head!” Andromeda snaps, reaches out to help, and Sirius, completely done, just stands up to dump it back in her arms.

July 1980 

James stumbles out of the fireplace and manages not to run into the opposite wall or land flat on his face by stopping himself against the arm of the sofa.  
  
  
He’s running on adrenaline, straight from the hospital to Moony and Padfoot’s flat, and no time for pleasantries because it’s happening, any minute now. Now, now, now!  
  
  
“This is not a drill!” he yells, whipping his head up and straightening his glasses, and then he freezes because in the middle of the floor, where the coffee table usually sits, Remus and Sirius are on their knees and they’re definitely not looking for something that’s rolled underneath the couch.  
  
  
James yelps and covers his mouth.  
  
  
Sirius yelps in reply and shouts at him, “cover your eyes, you bloody perv!”  
  
  
Remus tells them both to shut up, commendably calmly as he fumbles pulling his trousers up and climbs up from the carpet.  
  
  
“Agh! Sorry, lads-- Sorrysorry, but no time!” James averts his gaze to the window, but the curtains are closed, and the image, he thinks, is permanently seared on the inside of his eyelids now, anyway, so he turns back.  
  
  
Luckily, both Remus and Sirius are tucked away and Sirius has pulled a t-shirt on.  
  
  
Remus tugs a jumper on and tries to cover his blushing by faffing with his hair, but James doesn’t care - _can’t_ care - because his wife has her legs hiked up on a hospital bed and a nurse is telling her to push, but she _can’t_ until they’re all there, so he throws his arms up in the air in exasperation.  
  
  
“I said 'NO TIME!'”  
  
  
He dashes to the front door and comes rushing back to thrust shoes into hands, and then herd them toward the fireplace. “You’ve got five seconds- I’m chucking the powder in whether you have them on or not.”

 

  
**********

  
December 1980  
  
“Do you want kids? One day?” Sirius asks abruptly.  
  
  
They’re all sat around the Potter’s coffee table, but Remus is currently cradling Harry in his arms.  
  
  
He lays the length of Remus’ forearms, looking up into Remus’ face, batting Remus’ chin and nose with his tiny fingers.  
  
  
It’s painfully adorable, and Remus is doing such a good job at not sobbing openly onto the baby, that he thinks Lily should be thanking him profusely.  
  
  
“With _who_?” Remus laughs. It catches a little in his throat, but everyone pretends not to notice and sip tea.  
  
  
Sirius shrugs. “Theoretically?”  
  
  
There’s a lot of shuffling like that of a room full of people who are uncomfortably witnessing a very personal conversation and trying not to disrupt it.  
  
  
“ _Hypo_ thetically,” Peter corrects politely, but then James scowls over at him so he trails the word off into a loud cough to try and cover it up.  
  
  
Remus shrugs back, and Harry goes for an opportunity attack and sticks a finger and a thumb into his mouth.  
  
  
“Haven’t thought about it,” Remus lies once he fishes Harry’s little hand back out of his mouth, and then turns to Peter to shift the limelight. “Pete?”  
  
  
Peter opens his mouth, but Sirius speaks first.  
  
  
“You must have at least thought about whether it’s possible for you, you know, as a werewolf?”  
  
  
“Sirius!” Lily chides.  
  
  
“What? We’ve all thought about it!”  
  
  
“ _Have we?_ ” James asks dubiously.  
  
  
Remus finishes pretending to eat Harry’s hands, complete with chomping noises, and then sighs as he looks up at Sirius.  
  
  
“I guess because I’ve not known if I can, I just haven’t really let myself think about it properly. Anyway," he beams down into Harry’s little face, and Harry grins widely back. "We have Harry now!"  
  
  
“Okay, that’s enough,” Lily says firmly, but amused, and reaches out to swipe Harry away. “I’m going to be sick if I watch you two any longer. You’re too cute and it shouldn’t be allowed.”  
  
  
Remus laughs softly as he watches Harry be swept into his mother’s arms, and then his own seem to hang down at his sides like he’s completely forgotten in the last fifteen minutes what they’re used for when not holding babies.

 

 

  
**********

 

 

February 1973  
  
Sirius is thirteen and his favourite cousin has given birth to this wet, wriggling, mass of baby girl that Ted has just dropped into his arms unceremoniously.  
  
  
He only came around to give it a look, and now here he is, thrust into a wooden chair beside Andromeda’s bed, and the thing has been given to _him_ \- practically a child himself - to hold.  
  
  
"Oh, eurgh, it’s all floppy!”  
  
  
“Sirius, watch her head!” Andromeda snaps, reaches out to help, and Sirius, completely done, just stands up to dump it back in her arms.  
  
  
“Sorry, I don’t think she likes me,” he sighs, slumping back into the chair with relief.  
  
  
“Oh, she’s going to love you.” Andromeda smiles down at Nymphadora, and then looks up in the same way at Sirius, and he thinks she looks so lovely like that.  
  
  
He feels warm and loved, and a little voice in his head admits that he wishes Andromeda could have been his mum instead of his cousin.  
  
  
He suddenly feels a little more affectionate towards the wriggler now that he isn’t responsible for it possibly diving onto the floor, and he leans in to peer down at her.  
  
  
“She’s kind of cute, I guess,” he says softly.

 

 

  
**********

 

  
December 1976 

Sirius stamps over to the fireplace and throws the shredded letter into the fire so hard that Remus thinks he feels the twinge in his own shoulder.  
  
  
“What a fucking _awful_ woman!” Sirius shrieks, practically into the flames, and then he buries his hands in his hair and tugs, and Remus thinks he can feel the pain of it in his own scalp.  
  
  
The three marauders still seated all glance desperately at one another for help on what to say, but it’s hopeless, and Sirius probably wouldn’t hear them over his own yelling anyway.  
  
  
“What a fucking _rancid_ human being! Who let her procreate, I want to know? The healer at the hospital should have denied her the pleasure of taking me the fuck home, is what he should have had the decency to do. I mean, _one_ glance at that _horrid_ fucking woman should have been evidence enough, and he should have tied her fucking tubes right there and then!”  
  
  
Sirius lets go of his hair, and Remus breathes a little easier, but instead opts for growling loudly in anger.  
  
  
“Disown me? I’m fucking _glad_! She’s disowned in return; I no longer have mother! _God_ , I- I _hate_ her!” he snaps finally, and then turns around and throws himself down into a sitting position on the hearth.  
  
  
Remus, noting how much of a textbook Sulk is taking place before his eyes, is tempted to grin at the sight, until he notices the redness around Sirius’ eyes.  
  
  
A moment later, Sirius shifts the hand propping up his chin to cover his mouth slightly, and there is a distinct sort of sniffling noise that makes James’ eyes dart across to Remus’ in alarm.  
  
  
It becomes awkwardly apparent that _Sirius_ is _crying_.  
  
  
James looks horrified, and his hands twitch in a way that Remus knows is because he wants to hug Sirius, but isn’t sure if that’s the Done Thing, or if he would want him to.  
  
  
Peter begins to shift uncomfortably in his seat, looking between James and Remus with an air of panic.  
  
  
Remus begins to feel an ache rather deep in his chest, like he’s somehow absorbed all of Sirius’ hate and hurt and it’s giving him some sort of emotional heartburn.  
  
  
“I’m never having kids,” Sirius says in a croaky voice, and then shoves himself up from the ground and goes storming off to bed.

 


	9. May & June '75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sirius will be- well, actually he doesn’t do much these days. He usually just… antagonises Remus into fighting with him.” 
> 
> “... _Does_ he?” Lily asks, with a tone that makes James flick his eyes back from the window, where he was staring off into the distance to enhance his imagining powers. She's pulling an _Interested_ face at this news, which is, in itself, interesting.

June 1975  


“Could you write the title of my Potions essay for me while I go and grab the books, please?” Lily asks over her shoulder, as she’s already wandering off into the stacks.  
  
  
James stops writing his History paper and looks up to tut, but when he lays eyes on her he is hit by the same stab of desire he gets _every_ time he looks at her, and so of course he cannot say no.  
  
  
He still tuts, though, as he leans over and neatly transcribes the essay title from her intricate notes.  
  
  
When she comes back she marks her arrival by dropping three heavy textbooks down with a thud, so that James looks up, startled, and is caught once again by how beautiful she is.  
  
  
“You never told me where your cohorts are this afternoon. Did you ditch them just to sit with me in the library on a Saturday, because that’s, I guess that’s kind of sweet?” she says with such sincerity that James knows this time that it’s a genuine compliment.  
  
  
His face lights up as he nods and gives a half-shrug. “Well, I really wanted to come, so, yeah.”  
  
  
“What do you think they’re doing without you?”  
  
  
James sighs. “I know exactly what they’ll be doing. Pete will be bored out of his mind, so he'll start doing something stupid and mildly injure himself in some way. Remus will be pretending to read, but really having a nap. He thinks we haven’t clocked on, but he also doesn’t know that he snores.”  
  
  
Lily chuckles, and when James doesn’t continue she has to prompt him on. “And Sirius?”  
  
  
“Sirius will be- well, actually he doesn’t do much these days. He usually just… antagonises Remus into fighting with him.”  
  
  
“... _Does_ he?” Lily asks, with a tone that makes James flick his eyes back from the window, where he was staring off into the distance to enhance his imagining powers. She's pulling an _Interested_ face at this news, which is, in itself, interesting.  
  
  
“Pretty much.”  
  
  
“Is he… all right?” Lily asks then, almost cryptically, so that James has to narrow his eyes at her in question of whether she knows something.  
  
  
Lily narrows her eyes back, and tips her head at him accusingly.  
  
  
“You’re going to have to tell me what you’re getting at, because I have no clue what that look means,” James admits.  
  
  
Lily sighs shortly, and says, “He’s gay. He’s so very definitely gay. _Right?_ ”  
  
  
“Oh!” James says, and then nods, almost like it’s a relief to be able to talk to someone about this. “Yeah, definitely!”  
  
  
“Oh, thank God, I thought I’d read that entirely wrong!” Lily flaps a hand in front of her face like she almost overheated from the panic of being incorrect.  
  
  
“No, no!” James reassures, and then reels back as it occurs to him; “Wait, how did _you_ know?”  
  
  
“I just noticed. Very perceptive, me,” she says, and taps her temple knowingly.  
  
  
James narrows his eyes again, and then it clicks into place. “You spoke to Remus.”  
  
  
“I spoke to Remus,” Lily confirms.  


 

  
**********

 

 

May 1975  
  
  
Remus has been pacing at the bottom of the girl’s dormitory staircase for almost twenty minutes when Lily Evans finally comes to the top of the landing. She leans against the wall with her arms folded across her chest and raises her eyebrows expectantly at him from up above.  
  
  
Remus raises a hand and does a sort of pathetic wave. It manages to portray both an apology and a thanks, and miraculously persuades her to ascend the staircase towards him, although she does sigh wearily as she does so.  
  
  
“Some girls were complaining that you were loitering here for a _weird_ amount of time,” Lily says plainly. “So, I thought I should come and check on you.”  
  
  
Remus frowns at the description, but he supposes it’s somewhat fair. “Thanks. I _was_ actually wanting to talk to you, so…”  
  
  
“So?”  
  
  
“Privately, like.”  
  
  
“Unless there’s another loiterer you want to tell me about, then I think we’re alone here?” Lily says dryly.  
  
  
“No, it was definitely just me,” Remus admits, and slumps down against the wall. He drops his head between his hands and Lily is alarmed enough by this action that she almost immediately lowers herself down to sit beside him.  
  
  
“Okay, spit it out, then.”  
  
  
Remus groans for a long moment and then leans his head to the side so that he is peeking past one of his hands and part of a knee at her.  
  
  
“You did something you’re embarrassed about?” she guesses, and Remus winces, so she knows she’s either right, or partially on track.  
  
  
“Something happened _in general_ that you are embarrassed about?”  
  
  
Remus pulls a face where he looks a bit like he’s going to be sick.  
  
  
“ _Someone_ did something to embarrass you? Who was it; I can kill them.”  
  
  
“No!” Remus moans. The inflection he puts on it tells Lily that she both has the wrong end of the stick, and also begs  _could you please not murder on my behalf_ .  
  
  
“All right, well, maybe you could spill the bloody beans, rather than make me guess at it based on the _pitch of your whining_ !” Lily snaps, and Remus tuts and then scoffs in protest.  
  
  
He sits up and begins to fidget with his hair. “I don’t want to say it out loud.”  
  
  
“I’m not in the mood for charades.”  
  
  
“Right, then. I guess I should just, uh, suck it up then,” Remus nods, and it’s a little excessive, but finally he blurts it out. “I think Sirius and I fancy each other, and I don’t know what to do.”  
  
  
He covers his mouth with both hands once it’s all out and stares at Lily’s face, wide-eyed, in the hopes that he can be prepared to run away at the slightest hint of her beginning to laugh.  
  
  
All that happens, however, is that she tips her head sideways to consider Remus, an air of confusion in her expression.  
  
  
“How do you-- What is this based on?”  
  
  
Remus seems to blush at this question, and then says, “Well, you see, we- we kissed? I, I kissed him. And he kissed me back. And then he asked if we could do it again a lot more.”  
  
  
It seems it becomes Lily’s turn for her eyes to go wide.  
  
  
“ _You_ kissed _him_ ?”  
  
  
Remus nods uncertainly.  
  
  
“ _You_ ? _Kissed_ him?”  
  
  
His nod somehow gets a little more uncertain. His cheeks are fully flushed now.  
  
  
Suddenly, Lily laughs, but it’s more of a startled bark than a mocking chortle, and then she puts a hand on Remus’ one that sits atop his knee, and squeezes as she says, “Remus, you dark horse!”  
  
  
Remus tries to smile, but he’s so full of anxiety about it all that it comes off as more of a grimace.  
  
  
“Hang on, did you just say you _think_ you and Sirius might fancy each other?” Lily asks.  
  
  
Remus nods.  
  
  
“I think you’ve solved that puzzle already with the whole act of kissing, don’t you?”  
  
  
Lily Evans, fountain of knowledge, has illuminated the situation to such a degree that Remus can see rather clearly now, how utterly obvious this statement is.  
  
  
"Oh," he mutters, and when he looks up at her face she's all sharp eyebrows raised and lips pursed, so that he feels like a bit of an idiot. “I guess so.”  
  
  
“Was it just the one, then?” She asks, and Remus starts to deflate again against the wall.  
  
  
He nods solemnly. "Yeah, but it was only on Tuesday, I suppose. Not a lot of alone time since then, I guess."  
  
  
Lily, fond as she is of him, cannot help but find herself wholly exasperated by the way Remus mopes beside her.  
  
  
The situation already seems to be making her feel like a bloody fairy godmother, but suddenly she wishes she was so as to magically make everything okay for Remus, so he can cheer the fuck up.  
  
  
“Do you want to tell me what the real problem is, because so far I’m not quite getting a handle on what is wrong?” she asks carefully.  
  
  
Remus stares at her a moment, and then smiles down at his hands. When he looks up, he looks a bit shy, Lily notes, and then he says, “Nothing’s _wrong_. I just wanted to talk to you about it.”  
  
  
It hits Lily like an emotional bat to the face. She has to put a hand over her chest and she’s a little speechless for a moment.  
  
  
They’ve chatted on their hall patrols often, and they always make a great team when they’re supervising detentions or clean-ups, but Lily is confronted abruptly by the reality that she and Remus are actually, categorically… _Friends_ .  
  
  
Lily makes a soft sort of yelp, and throws her arms around Remus’ neck so fast that he thinks something bad has happened for a moment, but then she squeezes him slightly and he realises that it’s just a hug.  
  
  
“You can talk to me about it _whenever_ you want,” she says firmly once she’s let him go. He thinks he can see tears in her eyes, but he doesn’t think he should mention it in case it spurs her on. "In fact, there's a lot more details I'd like than you've given me, but I need to get to bed, so we'll do this again tomorrow, if you like?"  
  
  
“Thanks.” He smiles. “But, do you think you could- I mean, not tell anybody?”  
  
  
“Oh, pfft!” Lily exclaims, laughing like that is the most ridiculous thing she can think of. “ _Obviously!_ ”  


 


	10. June '79

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He steps back into the dim, silent hall, and tries to gulp down some air.
> 
> “So,” Remus says softly, and when Sirius turns he is looking up at him, poised halfway up the grand staircase. “You drove to your best friend’s parent’s funeral on a flying motorbike.”

June 1979 

“Is Sirius coming?” Peter asks, the question muffled from behind his fingers. His nails are bitten practically to bleeding, and he holds a raw finger to his lips in anticipation of the answer.  
  
  
Remus nods emphatically for a moment, but then shrugs, because really he should have been here over an hour ago. It’s true that this is rather keeping in Sirius’ character, but not for something like this, so Peter sighs worriedly and begins to chew again, and they continue to keep watch on the road for sign of him approaching.  
  
  
The wake bustles along inside the house without them.  
  
  
It has the strange sort of noise that comes from solemn words being spoken with somber voices between the dozens of people stuffed inside, and it gives Remus the willies to hear it, muffled through the oak front doors at his back.  
  
  
He half wishes he could run down the path and _away_ without being noticed or missed from it all, _but_ , he reminds himself firmly; _James_ .  
  
  
As it goes, just as he and Peter are delving headlong into another painful silence, the front door opens behind them, and they turn in unison to see James slip out onto the porch.  
  
  
His eyes are red and puffy, and he’s been drawing attention to them all day by fiddling with his glasses every other minute. It makes it very hard to look him in the eye properly, but they’re all making a very commendable effort to avoid making it weird.  
  
  
Remus sits on the porch banister, his legs dangling over the rhododendron bush that Mr Potter lovingly tended to twice a week.  
  
  
Measured and silent, James takes a seat at the top of the steps and tugs one of the flower heads off to occupy his hands.  
  
  
Peter, leaning on the opposite bannister to Remus, holds his fingers up in a V shape at him very pointedly and mimes something which, miraculously, Remus understands.  
  
  
He fishes out a cigarette, lights it, takes a puff, and then holds it out to James.  
  
  
When James doesn’t look up, Peter kindly nudges him with a foot and nods in Remus’ direction.  
  
  
“Where’s Padfoot?” he asks, once he’s reached out and plucked it from Remus’ fingers, and taken a satisfyingly long drag.  
  
  
His voice, Remus notes, is still thick from crying.  
  
  
Peter shrugs.  
  
  
To be fair, this is not an easy question to answer, particularly because Sirius has been living alongside James in the very house they sit outside for coming on three years now. If anybody should know his whereabouts, it would be James.  
  
  
They inadvertently sigh together at the same moment in collective exasperation at Sirius, and Remus’ mouth twitches like he hopes they might all manage to laugh at this, but it slips away again when he sees James’ frown.  
  
  
After James has smoked three quarters of the cigarette away, he turns to Peter and offers it out, and Peter, despite having never partaken in smoking with them all before, takes it.  
  
  
He eyes it warily before pressing it to his mouth, and then gives it a clumsy suck at precisely the same moment that Remus opens his mouth to attempt to coach him on the finer methods of smoking for the first time, which sends Peter into a fit of coughing. When he’s recovered enough to stand up straight again, he thrusts the cigarette away from himself, back into James’ hand, looking offended and disgusted.  
  
  
At this, Remus realizes, James is grinning widely. It very almost wipes away the sadness entirely from his face, but there’s still the redness of his eyes, and his mouth is still a little crooked, with lips that look anxiously chewed to within an inch of looking busted and cracked, but - _almost_ .  
  
  
He’s watching James’ profile wonderingly like this for a little moment, when a noise rather a jumbo jet hurling itself out of the sky and directly towards them begins to be heard in the distance.  
  
  
The possibility of an ambush crosses Remus’ mind, but almost instantly he acknowledges how absurd the thought is, and at once he knows who they will find at the source of the noise.  
  
  
The sound grows louder at an alarming rate, and despite knowing that it’s only Sirius approaching and not impending doom, he finds himself not wholly put at ease or made to feel any safer.  
  
  
Remus climbs down from the porch and starts slowly and warily down the path. He’s foolishly glancing up and down the street when Peter shouts “ _There!_ ”, and points a finger for Remus to follow, directly up into the sky.  
  
  
Unfortunately, he’s not wrong, and the black streak hurling itself towards them in the sky makes itself out soon enough to be an idiot riding a flying motorcycle.  
  
  
The noise becomes obnoxiously loud as he descends rapidly towards them, and then with a crescendo made from a combination of the engine shutting off and the bike making contact with ground, Sirius skids to a halt two metres up the lawn, ploughing it right up to a point about an inch away from Remus’ feet.  
  
  
“Am I late?” he yells, at precisely the same moment that Remus un-tenses all of his muscles and asks, “ _What the fuck?_ ”  
  
  
“Extremely,” Peter shouts back, and then James gets to his feet and discards the spent ciggie in some dying pansies. They all watch him as he crosses the lawn and then stands in front of the bike with his hands on his hips to admire it.  
  
  
It strikes Remus as exactly the type of stance Mr Potter would take when analysing things.  
  
  
When James has finished, he looks up at Sirius, who is waiting patiently, and raises an eyebrow.  
  
  
“You’re wearing a three-piece suit,” he says, in a tone that manages to relay both irritation and forgiveness for this strange escapade.  
  
  
“Yeah, and you guys all look like shit,” Sirius retorts, squinting up the path at Peter, who grimaces back like he wants to tell him off for swearing at a funeral. “Pete isn’t even wearing black!”  
  
  
James turns to check this over his shoulder, as Peter shifts on the porch in his white shirt and grey trousers, stroking his black tie down self-consciously.  
  
  
“I came in a black coat?” he attempts, and looks to Remus for reassurance.  
  
  
“He came in a black coat,” Remus kindly confirms, and then touches his own tie. “And mine was black, once upon a time.”  
  
  
“One of my cousins came in a bright green dress,” James tells them and Sirius scoffs like that is the rudest thing he’s ever heard - far worse than turning up almost two hours late, overdressed, on a motorbike that, by the sound of it, should be in its own grave by now.  
  
  
Suddenly, this seems like the funniest thing ever to James, who begins laughing lightly at first, and then breaks into a bellowing laugh. The absurdity of it sets them all off then, and they stand there laughing on the mangled lawn until James cuts himself off abruptly with a hand over his face.  
  
  
A frown cuts deeply into his brow and his glasses are slightly pushed askew by his fingers, and it’s clear that he’s very close to crying again, so Sirius puts a hand on his shoulder gives him a gentle shake.  
  
  
“We’re going for a drive,” Sirius says firmly as Peter joins them on the lawn, and they collectively eye the motorbike beneath him dubiously.  
  
  
“How?” Peter asks, and Sirius tuts, and gestures to the sidecar.  
  
  
“That has James written all over it,” Remus says, “but where do the rest of us go?”  
  
  
James scoffs. “That has _Remus_ written all over it, more like. I’m not getting in that thing like a bloody sidekick.”  
  
  
Remus scoffs back.  
  
  
“It’s for Pete, actually,” Sirius announces, and this startles them all again into turning his way.  
  
  
Peter looks overwhelmingly delighted by this news, so Sirius winks at him.  
  
  
“James can ride his broom alongside us, and Remus, you can go behind me on the bike,” Sirius says simply, like it’s the most obvious solution in the world.  
  
  
“Cracking!” James says over the top of Remus’ immediate protest.

 

  
  
**********

 

  
  
  
As the day had waned and the light had faded, the house had begun to empty of mourners.  
  
  
They filed out the same way they entered, grasping for James’ hand or pulling him into overwhelmingly large hugs, and Sirius watched from the lengthening shadows beside the staircase in the hall.  
  
  
There’s nought but a few Order members still left murmuring to one another over tea in the lounge, and James takes himself back off there once the last proper guest has left.  
  
  
He sits himself beside Mad Eye Moody and is handed a stiff drink and a comforting hand on his shoulder.  
  
  
Sirius, watching from the doorway now, feels the lack of comforting hand on his own shoulder, and reminds himself again that the Potters were not really _his_ parents, and that’s why nobody is handing him a tumbler of whiskey to numb his grief, or patting him on the back as a sign of support.  
  
  
He feels like he is being swept out into a sea of despair, and there’s nobody around who knows that he’s sinking, nobody knows to throw him a life ring, so this is it, he’s going to drown in it. He holds a hand to his chest, and he realises he’s breathing a little sharper than is normal.  
  
  
He steps back into the dim, silent hall, and tries to gulp down some air.  
  
  
“So,” Remus says softly, and when Sirius turns he is looking up at him, poised halfway up the grand staircase. “You drove to your best friend’s parent’s funeral on a flying motorbike.”  
  
  
He’s stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing down at Sirius like the sight of a man hyperventilating in the foyer of his deceased adoptive parents’ house is no biggie.  
  
  
His hair is stuck up on one side at an odd angle, and there’s a small smile in the corner of Remus’ mouth that leaches all of the terror and seriousness out of Sirius’ situation away, and instead leaves a gentle reminder that their eighteen year old lives are still plodding on with awkward abandon.  
  
  
Regardless of the ongoing horrors that their lives are becoming. against all odds, they are both still standing.  
  
  
“I bought it two weeks ago. They only just said it was ready to pick up this morning.”  
  
  
Sirius seems to think that Remus is speaking in a manner of being impressed by the contraption.  
  
  
“The morning of the funeral?” Remus repeats, and he thinks Sirius picks up on the amused disbelief in his tone this time, because he pauses to form an argument.  
  
  
“I- Well, it was the only moment I had to go and pick it up.”  
  
  
“The very moment _the funeral_ was occurring?” Remus asks, incredulously, but laughing lightly as he descends the staircase.  
  
  
A responding laugh bubbles it’s way up out of Sirius, and he lets go of his shirt front when he realises that his breathing has evened out.  
  
  
“God, can't you see I'm trying to evade the question? Let a man just get away with it this once, on the day of his bloody- on- _today_?” Sirius asks.  
  
  
Remus stops in front of Sirius and gives him a quiet, knowing smile. He doesn't offer anything further, but Sirius lowers his eyes to the marble floor as though he has been called out.  
  
  
“I think James needed to be the only son for the day.”  
  
  
“I think James might’ve needed you to be here, actually,” Remus suggests.  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head, his eyes still on the ground. “Well, I needed to _not_ be here.”  
  
  
Remus gives him a sad smile and touches Sirius’ cheek gently. “I gathered that.”  
  
  
Sirius feels an overwhelming affection for the way Remus understands him in this moment, and he leans forward and kisses him very tenderly on the lips. He pulls away and then follows it with a second before whispering, “Please don’t die,” against his mouth in what he intends to be blithe but just comes off as bleak, and then takes Remus in his arms and kisses him thoroughly.  
  
  
Almost immediately, the doors to the lounge rattle and begin to open, so Sirius presses a palm over Remus’ mouth and pushes him back into the shadows underneath the stairs at the far end of the hall.  
  
  
Remus eyes the hand, but doesn’t resist it, and lets himself be pushed until Sirius is flush against him in the nook where nobody except the inhabitants of several paintings can see them.  
  
  
It’s hard to be bothered about them, however, when Sirius removes his hand slowly and watches Remus from beneath dark eyelashes with a look that says there’s an imminent chance he is going to be devoured.  
  
  
There is the distinct sound of James seeing some more, or possibly the rest of the guests out of the house - the muttering of goodbyes and well wishes -and then the front door closes with a click.  
  
  
They hear a receding shuffle and the lounge doors slam shut again.  
  
  
There's a moment where they gaze at one another and silently come to the agreement that it's fine for them to do this. Grief makes you do strange things, and life is to be lived, and all that, and in terms of logistics, this nook beneath the stairs is tucked away so deeply that it's practically a room itself.  
  
  
“Can you be quiet?” Sirius asks in a low voice that makes the hairs on the back of Remus’ neck stand on end, and all he can manage is a nod in response.  
  
  
Sirius nods back and presses his fingers to Remus’ jaw, thoughtfully inspecting the pair of scars that curve up his chin.  
  
  
He touches where the longer one cuts through the corner of Remus’ mouth, and then runs his thumb down Remus’ neck.  
  
  
Sirius feels the shiver that runs through him, and says in a close murmur, “I remember when these ones happened.” Then he flattens his tongue against them, and licks up the length until Remus turns his face and kisses him.  
  
  
There’s a scuffle as they both reach out at the same time to undo trousers.  
  
  
There’s a thud and a gasp as Sirius shoves Remus up against the wall again, but it’s accompanied by a mouth on his neck so he does very little complaining.  
  
  
“If you knock me out against this wall--” he tries to threaten, but it’s breathless, and a moan on a sigh immediately follows it, so it doesn’t quite have the same impact.  
  
  
Sirius laughs against his mouth, as he pulls a thigh up to his hip and begins to grind into Remus in an attempt to show him what they could be getting up to if only he would _hurry up and lift his other leg_ .  
  
  
He catches on rather quickly then, and with a palm on the adjacent wall for support, and the other hand gripping the back of Sirius’ neck, he is hoisted up against the wall, and in this fashion he lets Sirius have his way with him.

 


	11. June '76, June '75, & May '77

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carefully, slowly, he looks up at Remus. He’s studying their entwined hands, and then his green eyes flick up and Sirius knows they are thinking the exact same thing - _this is very different_.

June 1976 

Sirius follows at Remus’ heels, trying to keep up with his hurried pace, and finally, before he can leave through the portrait hole, reaches out to stop him.  
  
  
“Moony, _please_ , just _listen_ to me?” he attempts in a hushed tone, as it is, after all, early evening in the Gryffindor common room and there are plenty of students already watching.  
  
  
Remus whips around, and his expression is heartbreaking. It's made all the worse by how livid and red the deep scratches on his face and neck look.  
  
  
He points a warning hand at Sirius and it, too, has a harsh gouging wound across the back of it.  
  
  
“Don’t _touch me_ ! Or I swear to God, I will _break your fucking hand_ !” he shouts, and the entire common room goes silent like the sound has been sucked rapidly out of the tower.  
  
  
In the face of so much raw anger, Sirius reels back, breathless and frightened.  
  
  
He’s never seen Remus like this before, and it’s bad enough to have it directed at him, but it makes him sick to know that _he did this_ .  
  
  
He’s horrified and ashamed with himself, but more than that, Sirius is terrified that nothing will ever fix this.  
  
  
Remus doesn’t storm away immediately, leaves a beat almost like he holds out some small hope that Sirius has a full and simple excuse to explain it all away.  
  
  
What he wouldn’t give to have this all be a misunderstanding. He practically shakes with the want of it, stood waiting in front of Sirius.  
  
  
And across the two foot gulf now between them, Sirius wishes just as hard that he possesses the kind of magic words to put it all right, but as it is, he just opens his mouth and absolutely nothing worthwhile comes out.  
  
  
He says Remus’ name softly, imploringly, but Remus just sighs, shakes his head and turns away.  
  
  
He manages to slam the portrait hole behind himself and the common room erupts into scandalised murmuring behind Sirius.  
  
  
Sirius closes his eyes tightly and tries not to cry.

  
**********

  

  
  
June 1975

James goes hurtling out of the dormitory with barely any explanation and a vague promise to be back in ‘a little while’, and being not an uncommon occurrence the other boys let him go.  
  
  
It’s most likely he’ll come back with half a prank and a key ingredient for wreaking havoc, and leap into a lengthy lecture on timing and execution.  
  
  
It’s kind of inspiring, and Remus feels a spark of excitement at the prospect, actually. It’s been a while since their last big hurrah, and while he sometimes plays the reluctant one he does rather like getting his hands dirty.  
  
  
His favourite is the feeling he gets when he lies to a teacher and they eat it right up - it jumps on him like guilt or shame at first, but then he knows if he just catches Sirius’ eye it sparks through him; the exhilaration of his approval.  
  
  
Then Sirius sits down on the bed beside him, and Remus is snapped from his reverie.  
  
  
He’s staring at Remus with a very meaningful expression, but when Remus turns to glance across the room, Peter is hunched over on his bed changing his socks.  
  
  
“Pete,” Sirius calls loudly, his eyes still fixed on Remus, “go and find out what Prongs is up to.”  
  
  
“Fuck off!” Peter calls back, muffled by his head being down by his feet. “Find out yourself, I’m going to raid the kitchen. Moony, are you with me?”  
  
  
“It’s nearly lunch.”  
  
  
“Your loss,” Peter sniffs, and with freshly stocking-ed feet, scampers away to bother the house-elves.  
  
  
The door clicks shut and they are plunged into silence.  
  
  
In that moment an imperceptible shift happens, and they both become startlingly aware of the fact that they’re sat on Remus’ bed, where he lays and sleeps, and does certain other things, and it feels distinctly scandalous.  
  
  
Remus thinks he would actually be fine if one of them just bit the bullet and said outright that they both just want to make out, maybe someone could give the other a handjob, or be daring enough to suck someone off, but they're pussyfooting around it like the pathetic little teenagers that they are, and Remus couldn't be more mortified by his own adolescence right now.  
  
  
He wishes he could be blase about it - _like Sirius_ , he would usually say, but here’s Sirius, sat right before him, almost frozen solid with nerves.  
  
  
Remus feels like he’s missing a piece of the puzzle, the most crucial part, and he had it only last week. He used it to get him from here to practically ravishing Sirius in the middle of the first floor corridor, and now he can’t for the life of him remember how you traverse this obstacle.  
  
  
He shifts on the bed and stares pointedly in the opposite direction so as to roll his eyes at himself, and swear under his breath.  
  
  
Meanwhile, Sirius stares down at Remus’ hand where it rests between them on the duvet.  
  
  
He can’t be certain, but it feels like an invitation, or a dare, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t step up and take it, so Sirius tips his hand sideways off his own lap and touches Remus’ outstretched fingers with his own.  
  
  
He holds his breath and when Remus doesn’t snatch it away after a second, Sirius runs a finger over the back of his hand and then slips his fingers beneath Remus’.  
  
  
His thumb presses gently over scarred knuckles, and feeling like both a champion and a madman he wonders how something so ordinary as touching a hand can make you feel so fucking excited.  
  
  
Carefully, slowly, he looks up at Remus.  
  
  
He’s studying their entwined hands, and then his green eyes flick up and Sirius knows they are thinking the exact same thing - _this is very different_ .  
  
  
“I watched you take a punch to the face like nobody I’ve ever seen in my fucking life,” Sirius blurts out, and the awe in which he speaks about him is so overwhelming that Remus forgets for a moment that this statement has come completely out of fucking nowhere.  
  
  
“Your nose was bleeding, and he totally thought you’d just run off, but you spat some blood out and jumped on him, and I just wish McGonagall had turned up even two minutes later so I could have watched you beat the shit out of him!” Sirius laughs, gazing over with warm admiration, and Remus smirks, remembering Malfoy’s expression of horror as Remus pinned him to the floor, but he is still somewhat confused.  
  
  
“And that- you _liked_ that?” he asks.  
  
  
Sirius raises an eyebrow. It tells Remus rather succinctly that he’s an idiot for asking such an obvious question,  and the news is wholly stunning.  
  
  
Sirius nods then, ever so earnestly. It’s also possible that he moves minutely closer.  
  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” Remus says quietly, understanding abruptly what is being said, and he feels a warmth unfurl in the centre of himself.  
  
  
He wants to grin to the point of looking like a fool, and he knows by the tingle that his face is heating rapidly, so he swiftly leans over and kisses Sirius.  
  
  
As far as declarations go, being told that the sight of you getting in a fight was the turning point of attraction is hardly romantic, but then his own story is a million times more ridiculous and he’d dive out the closest window before admitting it, so instead he moves closer and lets Sirius put his hands in his hair.

 

 

**********

 

  
June 1976

Remus storms away from the tower and slips out into the school grounds using a secret passage for speed. He can feel his face is burning hot as he breaks out into the frigid air, headed for the greenhouses.  
  
  
He knows exactly how the handle on greenhouse 4 is faulty so that it can be jimmied open even after it has been supposedly locked, and once he’s inside, he stands, fuming in the middle of the room.  
  
  
He casts his hurried gaze around and is horrified to find that there are no plant pots in sight that are small enough to hoist over his head and hurl at the ground with a pleasant smash.  
  
  
He feels frantic for it, afraid for how he can channel this feeling if not in the originally planned way, and he has to spin around, searching desperately for something to break, but the exhilaration of running here is quickly wearing off and he can feel the tearing pain in his chest swelling back to full with a vengeance.  
  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut against it, like that will help, and he’s so wrong because all he can see now is the image of Sirius’ expression,  minutes ago when he had screamed in his face.  
  
  
It’s quickly eclipsed by his face from a week ago, when they were up against one another in a cubicle inside the Prefect’s bathroom - the gentle frown of desperation and the soft parting of his lips - but even that is dashed aside and he’s left with the worst thought of them all.  
  
  
He couldn’t know how it happened really, but in his nightmarish imaginings of Sirius telling Severus Snape Remus’ very own deepest, darkest secret, Sirius is grinning wickedly, and _God, he hates him_ .  
  
  
Remus tries to let the thought manifest.  
  
  
He says it out loud, and then again, standing in the middle of the greenhouse wanting instead to scream. He thinks he feels it build in his throat, like a howl, but when it surfaces he is shocked to find that it’s just a sob.  
  
  
He doesn’t want to cry at this, doesn’t want to let it possess him like that, and so with no other option before him to ease the pain, and before sense can seize him, Remus pulls out his wand and throws his arm out at the window directly opposite him.  
  
  
Some people say it’s hard to cast when you’re overly emotional, and some say it’s easy, but what they mean really is the exact same thing - that you’re turning on a tap, but you may not be ready for the flood.  
  
  
“ _Reducto!_ ”  
  
  
At the moment of shouting the word Remus thinks he gets an inkling of what is about to happen, in that fraction of a second before he feels the activation in the warmth of the wand in his hand, but it’s of course far too late by then.  
  
  
He watches the pane of glass he aimed at shatter, as planned, and then like a drop of water in a pond, sees the magic ripple outwards as every single window in the greenhouse bursts out into the yard.  
  
  
Frozen beneath the steel frame of what was a moment ago Greenhouse 4, Remus listens to the aftermath; the sound of falling glass striking the surrounding greenhouses, perhaps even breaking some of their windows too, and then like the well-versed Marauder that he is, he runs.  
  
 

**********

 

May 1977

There is one week left before their graduation ceremony.  
  
  
The moon is waning and Remus is three days healed. Lessons are over, his library books have been returned, and he’s fully packed barring the clothes he wears on his back and the neat pile of clothes-to-be-worn on top of his trunk.  
  
  
They’re six days away from climbing aboard the Hogwarts Express and returning to their respective corners of the world (or Britain, at least) and confronting the rest of their lives.  
  
  
It’s terrifying, of course it is, but Remus has managed to get himself stuck on an entirely different dilemma than figuring out a career based on a mixed bag of N.E.W.T.s and the nuisance of lycanthropy.  
  
  
He wants to lose his virginity.  
  
  
It’s a rather precise decision to make by oneself, but he thinks of the weeks - possibly months - ahead, of being stuck in the cottage with just his dad, forced to have quiet, shameful wanks in the cramped little bed he slept in as a child, and it’s just grim and weird.  
  
  
It’s too fucking weird.  
  
  
When will they next have a bedroom that is literally theirs, and theirs alone? - well, plus James and Peter, but that hardly counts.  
  
  
He needs this to carry him through the unknown and possibly lengthy period of time.  
  
  
He starts to need it so bad once he’s set his mind on it that he feels like it’s all he thinks about.  
  
  
Remus isn’t sure that he was this nervous when they were first getting together, learning each other in the half-chaste touches and tastes of teenage exploration, but two years(ish) is a bloody long time and it’s like a timer has run out and now he can feel his blood coursing and heart beating frantically anytime Sirius gets close to him.  
  
  
He has spent the last hour and ten minute sat behind Sirius in a sort of Careers lecture held in the Great Hall, trying not to stare at him.  
  
  
Unfortunately, in his current state, not looking at Sirius means _thinking_ about Sirius, and all his mind focuses on are his mouth and his hands, resulting in one horrific moment when he comes very close to getting hard in the middle of assembly.  
  
  
As soon as the talk finishes, Remus grabs Sirius by the arm and, not unkindly, tugs him up the marble staircase. The others follow but he’s mainly focused on getting Sirius into the dormitory - ridding it of the other two can be dealt with afterwards.  
  
  
When they reach it, what seems like a lifetime of climbing stairs later, Remus watches them all gravitate toward their own beds and feels like tearing his hair out.  
  
  
“James!” he calls abruptly, and before he’s really thought about it, he continues, “Don’t you want to see Lily today?”  
  
  
Sirius and Peter accompany James in turning to look curiously at Remus, and Remus worries that he’s beginning to sweat.  
  
  
“Erm,” James says, putting down the broomstick maintenance kit he had been about to pile on the ‘to-be-packed’ area of his bed. “Sure? I mean, we both have a meeting with Dumbledore later to pick the next Heads, so I’ll see her then…”  
  
  
Remus nods continually throughout this. It substitutes his urge to cry out in desperation.  
  
  
“ _Peter_ ? Don’t you have, er-” Remus attempts but quickly flounders, and he knows it was a stupid sentence to begin anyway.  
  
  
Sirius, sensing something wrong, begins to speak, but Remus finally gives in.  
  
  
He sighs heavily and clasps his hands together like he’s begging.  
  
  
“ _Listen_ ,” he says, looking between James and Peter intensely, “I _really_ need you both to- to just, _fuck off_ for a bit. Can you please, could you _please_ just do that for me, for like, even just an _hour_ ? I’m begging you both. I’ll probably do anything you want in return, but I just need, for non-specific reasons-- I _need_ this room, without you both in it, for minimum one hour.”  
  
  
He takes a deep breath and gazes imploringly at them. “ _Please?_ ”  
  
  
He knows it’s weird and cryptic, and he very obviously didn’t involve Sirius by name or even by looking at him, but perhaps it’s not so strange to beg permission to be alone in the room with just one of your best friends for at least an hour for an undefined reason?  
  
  
_Maybe they’re planning a surprise?_  
  
  
Remus holds his breath and watches.  
  
  
There’s a beat of silence within which James and Peter, like actors in a camp old movie, exchange a wary glance and then they both turn to look at Sirius.  
  
  
Sirius plays dumb so very well, but when he looks over at Remus and he feels it like being touched.  
  
  
He sees the very effort it takes Sirius to put on nonchalance and certainty, as he shrugs and says, "Give it an hour and a half, just in case it's really important." 

 

 


	12. June '76 & Jan '80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can’t do this,” he tells Sirius, forcefully, and Sirius nods emphatically. “--you can’t do anything like this ever again.”

June 1976 

  
Remus lays in his bed listening to the coughing and sniffling coming from across the room - sobs that tug at the sore, raw parts of himself - and tries his hardest to hold within his mind the knowledge that he feels this very way _because of_ the boy crying in the next bed.  
  
  
It has been five days. Not even an entire week.  
  
  
Remus hasn’t been allowed back into classes yet, and blood still weeps through the layers of his many bandages; both effectually reminding him from minute to minute of the considerable offence that has been done to his person (and his beast).  
  
  
Emotionally, he has been a pendulum, swinging wildly between anger, devastation, and something else. When he can’t sleep - like now - he analyses this acute sensation, not unlike being torn in two, wherein his desire and his dignity can’t both be satisfied.  
  
  
His head aches, and he’s tired, and he wishes just _one fucking second_ of his life could possibly pass without centring around Sirius Black.  
  
  
At approximately two in the morning, when the room is silent and attentive but for Sirius’ unsubtle crying, Remus gets up.  
  
  
He paces across to Sirius’ bed and tugs the hangings open. Moonlight spills over his shoulder and illuminates Sirius, curled on his side with a hand in front of his face, and shining eyes look up at Remus, startled.  
  
  
“ _Shut up_ ,” Remus snaps, in the best hushed voice he can manage while still conveying annoyance.  
  
  
Sirius chokes back a sob and hurriedly sits up. He’s very obviously shocked to find Remus stood before him and actually speaking to him after an agonising week of silent treatment, and he stammers over a multitude of words.  
  
  
“Haven’t you taken enough from me already without taking away my sleep as well?” Remus whispers severely, but it feels bitter rather than righteous, so he just frowns down at Sirius harder.  
  
  
“Remus--” Sirius begins, on a sob, but Remus lets go of the bed hanging and plants a hand firmly over his mouth.  
  
  
He has to grab him by the shoulder to do it forcefully, and though Sirius doesn’t try to fight him off, he does take hold of Remus’ wrist in return.  
  
  
“I said _shut up_ ,” Remus says again, manages to get it out before his voice breaks.  
  
  
He feels Sirius’ lips work against the skin of his hand, desperate to tell him something, and when Remus shoves at him abruptly to make his point, Sirius squeezes the thin bones of his wrists, tugging until Remus has to put a knee on the bed to keep his balance.  
  
  
“ _No_ ,” he bites, and he’s looming over Sirius. “I’m going back to bed now, and you’re going to be fucking quiet.”  
  
  
He sort of feels like he’s acting. It’s dark but for the moon, like a spotlight on his back, and he’s whispering theatrically, threateningly, but the anger feels put on. He keeps saying harsh words, but he doesn’t want to.  
  
  
He’s leaning over Sirius on the bed and it’s so distinctly reminiscent of gentler times in extremely recent history, that it feels almost fake.  
  
  
Exhaustion suddenly overwhelms him, and he goes to push away, but Sirius holds onto his wrist and shakes his head, pleadingly.  
  
  
Remus is halted, his body turned away, knee just barely still on the bed and looks down with confusion at Sirius’ grip.  
  
  
It’s strange, Remus thinks, how before, this would have felt intimate and clandestine. Sneaking in the dark to one another’s beds, with the fact of James and Peter lying awake, listening from mere feet away would have been mortifying. Unthinkable.  
  
  
As it is, Remus leans on the bed, flicks his gaze from nail-bitten hands to wet eyes, and demands silently for Sirius to let go of him.  
  
  
_Please_ , Sirius mouths.  
  
  
Remus just shakes his head, and it has the quality of being the answer to many questions attached to Sirius.  
  
  
“I won’t--” Sirius says, then, and it’s quiet but he’s not whispering. “If you just -- _stay_ \-- I can be quiet.”  
  
  
It doesn’t have the tone of a bribe, but it comes very close. Remus knows this should irritate him, and warrants harsh words if anything up until this point has, but he doesn’t move.  
  
  
When Remus doesn’t budge even to try tugging away again, Sirius very slowly begins to pull Remus in.  
  
  
Rather aptly, Sirius feels it akin to gaining an animal’s trust.  
  
  
He keeps his gaze locked with Remus’ and guides him carefully onto the bed, and when the point comes for him to fall or climb the rest of the way himself, Remus pulls his wrist free and pauses.  
  
  
He levels Sirius with a firm gaze and says, “I need to sleep. Don’t speak to me in the morning, and don’t think this changes anything.”  
  
  
He waits for the understanding nod, and with that, he crawls over Sirius and climbs beneath the covers beside him.

 

 

**********

  
  
January 1980  
  
  
“I’m just worried I don’t know enough to be _a dad_!”  
  
  
James has been agonising over this point for a month since he told them all, sick with fear and excitement, that Lily was pregnant.  
  
  
“You’ll think you can’t until you do it,” Remus says wisely, dragging a plastic milk crate stuffed with his belongings out of the boot of his father’s car.  
  
  
James, hauling a battered, brown, leather suitcase out alongside him, blinks as he processes the words for a moment, and then follows Remus up the path.  
  
  
They’re moving Remus into the flat that Sirius had originally rented alone, and then convinced Remus through lots of bombarding and nagging that if he took the box room, it would be like living in the closet and wouldn’t warrant paying proper rent for.  
  
  
Somehow, this worked, but Sirius chalked it up to Remus’ desperation to get out from under his father’s feet at the cottage and to, quite frankly, get the fuck back out of Wales.  
  
  
“You say that like it’s your own personal mantra,” James says loudly to his back so as to be heard over the wind.  
  
  
Remus doesn’t turn to reply, or raise his voice, so James barely catches it. “Sort of.”  
  
  
They do another trip down to the car and back into the flat before James pipes up again. He’s fairly out of breath now, having taken all of the heavier items to spare Remus, even though it’s midway through the moon-calendar month and he could probably manage it.  
  
  
He isn’t sure what spark makes the connection in his mind, but James finds in Remus’ solemn response an echo of misery similar to a very specific moment in their lives. It could be that in not having to directly look at Remus as they carry out their task, James feels an ease in broaching the subject.  
  
  
“Is that how you felt about it with _him_?” James flicks his eyes to the ceiling, in approximation of Sirius’ room, but Remus isn’t looking of course. “After-- _you know_ , at school?”  
  
  
Remus reaches past him into the back seat of the car to pull out a load of clothes still on their coat-hangers.  
  
  
“I think it was how I felt,” James offers, in prompting. “Y’know? ‘Thought I couldn’t let him off, but then _you_ did, and I guess I thought: if Remus _himself_ can, then that’s… enough. Or something.”  
  
  
A second load of clothes are thrust into his hands. Remus leads the way back up the path.  
  
  
Inside, Remus puts his pile over the back of a grubby couch, then takes James’ stack and adds it on top. He moves to go back outside but James is stood in the doorway, looking serious.  
  
  
“And I think that’s what I’ve always found confusing,” he says, and when Remus squeezes by him to fetch another batch from the car, he returns to find the rest of James’ question waiting. “How you managed to forgive him, after he hurt you like that?”  
  
  
Remus drops the second crate of his belongings inside the door, and bends to pick up a book he didn’t know he owned.  
  
  
James stands and watches, his hope that Remus is going to resolve his understanding of this black hole in their collective history dwindling, but Remus just turns it over in his hand before he replies.  
  
  
“Sirius has hurt me and continues to hurt me,” Remus says plainly, like it’s a fact of life, invariable and constant, and James waits for the ‘ _but_ ’ for a moment before realising profoundly that it doesn’t need to be said aloud.  
  
  
“I probably do the same to him, on occasion.”  
  
  
“And you’re okay with that?” James asks, despite.  
  
  
Remus throws the book back down and finally looks up at James, to tip his head in question. “What’s my alternative?”

 

 

**********

  
June 1976  
  
In the morning, Remus opens his eyes and Sirius is blinking back at him as though he too has just awoken. Some noise, perhaps, had stirred them both simultaneously.  
  
  
The light inside the bed hangings is dim and the air is stuffy and overly warm.  
  
  
It hadn’t taken very long for Remus to drift off to sleep once he had imagined laying in the bed alone - the strangeness of lying beside someone you don’t particularly like being somewhat of a sleep deterrent.  
  
  
Sirius’ eyes are bloodshot, and it’s unclear if he slept at all, but he was, indeed, silent.  
  
  
They’re touching at a shin and a knee, with one’s leg slightly overlapping the other, and Remus wonders how to get out of bed.  
  
  
He wonders why he’s taking the time to be gentle and easy, and not dashing out of the bed now that he’s awake and fulfilled his half of the bargain, when he knows Sirius will be thinking the exact same things and reading into it as a sign of hope.  
  
  
Remus frees his arms from the heavy weight of the bed covers, and when his hand comes to rest on the pillow between them, Sirius takes it tentatively.  
  
  
It’s like drawing a bucket up a well - Remus feels it tug from low in his stomach and ache up the back of his throat. Though he tries to hold them still, his mouth and his chin begin to tremble and, too quick to catch, tears roll from the corner of his eyes.  
  
  
He has to open his mouth to breathe through it.  
  
  
It makes him feel like a child. He hasn’t cried like this since then, probably since he was five years old, and his mother had to rock him for hours to stop it.  
  
  
Sirius crowds in, curls himself in towards Remus so that his face is buried in the crook of his neck, hand still grasped in his own.  
  
  
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry--” he whispers there, over and over, until Remus’ breathing evens out again, and he swipes fiercely at his face with a sleeve.  
  
  
“You can’t do this,” he tells Sirius, forcefully, and Sirius nods emphatically. “--you can’t do anything like this ever again.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god, I actively attempted not to make this one angst-ridden.
> 
> **Remus' first line of Jan, '80 is an homage to the writing of [fluorescentgrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey/works?fandom_id=136512), who is fucking outstanding.  
> This "mantra" is pulled directly from one of their fics, Silence Kit, and I hope to god they don't mind.  
> I couldn't recommend reading this author more highly to you all, than telling you that I pretty much ugly-cried my way through every piece I've read so far.


	13. July '78 + Feb & March '80

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s cut off when Lily slaps him across the face.
> 
> “Oh, Jesus!” she shrieks, puts one hand to her mouth and the other to Remus’ red cheek. “Oh, shit, that was harder than I meant to, Remus!”
> 
> “I’m going to trust that I deserved that."

July 1978  
  
It’s pleasantly warm, and the room is quiet but for the mysterious thudding on the wall from next door’s flat. It’s almost rhythmic and has the soft quality possessed by plasterboard that has spent decades absorbing the steam and sweat of a myriad of tenants.  
  
  
Remus presses his head back into the worn cotton sheets of Sirius’ bed, closes his eyes and feels content.  
  
  
It’s midsummer, and he has spent the past year stuck on his ancestral hillside farm in the north of Wales, _aching_ for this.  
  
  
It came as far more of a shock than anticipated to be thrust from the clamour of boarding school, straight back into the remoteness of the Nant Gwynant valley, and while loneliness is a fairly decent reason to escape for a summer holiday down to London, Remus is far too high and elated currently to disguise the real reason.  
  
  
The bed dips at his feet, and when Remus lifts his head, Sirius is crawling up the length of him with a devouring grin on his lips.  
  
  
A tingle goes up Remus’ spine and he laughs like he can’t help himself. It’s the laugh that makes his nose scrunch up and the sun has been working on his freckles all morning, bringing them out high on his cheeks and nose.  
  
  
The combination makes him look youthful and golden where he’s far too often weary and a little grey, and Sirius suddenly feels impatient to get hands on him.  
  
  
He’d rather like to tell him that he’s beautiful, but Sirius isn’t good at making words like those sound sincere without going a bit melancholy about it, and he’d quite like to keep Remus in this mood.  
  
  
Just as Sirius reaches down to him, Remus lifts his leg and puts a foot at the juncture where Sirius’ neck meets his left shoulder, and he’s stalled abruptly in his pursuit.  
  
  
Remus grins wickedly up at him, his tongue between his teeth, but Sirius is better at teasing and he expertly puts two fingers behind the knee of the offending leg, and it gives, bends at the same moment that he presses the heel of a hand high between Remus’ thighs.  
  
  
In answer Remus drops his knees open, and he loses the mirth for a more consumed expression as Sirius moves in.  
  
  
It’s been a year growing understandably fucking fed up of the relentless open countryside, and Adult Life - the Muggle union strikes on one side, and gaining the wretched first-hand experience of prevalent lycanthrope discrimination on the Wizarding side (and not to mention the subsequent money-issues relating to both)  - but more importantly, it has been a year without _this_.  
  
  
Sirius leans down and puts his mouth at Remus’ hip, leaves wet, biting kisses down to his inside thigh, divesting him of his briefs along the way and throwing them carelessly over his shoulder.  
  
  
Remus arches towards his mouth as he leans back down, and Sirius smirks at his desperation, pushes him back to the mattress with the flat of his  palm and Remus sighs with something like frustration.  
  
  
There’s all sorts of perfectly good reasons to be in the capital.  
  
  
The hub of the Order is here for one, and despite their treatment when attending the meetings still somewhat equivalent to being relegated to the kids table at a party, Remus can feel it in his bones that their time is coming.  
  
  
That isn’t even mentioning the number of school friends living in the city, nor the general convenience of metropolitan living, and though the resplendent beauty of his valley is incomparable to the smog and noise of the London streets, he just-- _That’s it_ , he’s made up his mind.  
  
  
“Would you like it if I, _ah_ -” Remus breathes, splaying his fingers into Sirius’ soft hair as he moves in to swipe his tongue over- “I thought maybe I could come and live here?”  
  
  
Sirius sort of freezes for a second, and then looks up so quickly that his hair flips like he’s a model in a photoshoot. He gawps.  
  
  
“What- in London, or--?”  
  
  
Remus worries at his lip a moment. His hand is still beside Sirius’ face, but his arm begins to ache so he pulls it in to chew at a nail instead.  
  
  
“Well, I could try to rent in a Muggle neighbourhood, and then, I’m not too sure about what I’ll do for work right now, but-”  
  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” Sirius cuts in breathlessly. He has a lopsided smile that to Remus conjures only the word ‘dopey’. “Do it.  You could move in with me, if you want?”  
  
  
They stare at each other for a beat, and the weight of the offer hangs between them. There isn’t a reason against the idea, but there is an agreed perception of something foolhardy in it.  
  
  
Regardless, Remus nods.  
  
  
They’ll discuss and argue out the details later, but for now it’s settled. Remus feels like a weight is taken off his shoulders and in an hour or so he’ll feel a new weight settle in its place as he thinks about money and having to deal with the werewolf registry, and all of the other little niggly issues that float to the surface.  
  
  
For now, though, he presses his head back into the mattress and lets his mind go to where Sirius touches him very delicately with his fingers and his mouth, and tries to hold back the groan of pleasure building in his chest.

 

  
  
  
**********

 

February 1980

“Kensington Gardens.”  
  
  
“No.”  
  
  
“Hyde Park?”  
  
  
“Same thing!”  
  
  
“Hampstead Hea-”  
  
  
“I’m not running around _any part_ of London as a werewolf, Sirius. End of.”  
  
  
Sirius has a half-laugh very visible on his face. It says that’s he’s joking, unless Remus is up for it.  
  
  
He isn’t aware yet of the extent to which Remus is very much _not_ up for it.  
  
  
“Well, you’re not going to those horrible rooms. Moony, they’re like bloody jail cells!"  
  
  
Remus squeezes a hand around a figurine of a shepherdess that he thinks Sirius brought with him when he moved in, but Sirius insists was here on the mantelpiece when he arrived.  
  
  
Her crook digs into the flesh of his thumb, and it helps the rising tide in his blood, but her face is also too serene to be herding sheep - he's done it before, once or twice, and can make you want to tear your hair out - so he has to breathe heavily to try and slow the beat.  
  
  
“I _know_ what they’re like,” he says in a very controlled voice.  
  
  
The laughter falls from Sirius’ face.  
  
  
The full moon is tomorrow night, and Remus feels it drawing in like a tug on all of his bones. The tugging happens to be in all directions at once, and so he aches, and fidgets, and feels boundlessly exhausted.  
  
  
Sirius comes to him and puts his arms warmly around his body, holds him and buries his face in Remus’ neck. Remus looks down at the back of his head and tries not to give in to the urge to recoil from his embrace.  
  
  
It’s just the hormones. Just the moon making him feel like a fucking animal bastard.  
  
  
He drops his head to Sirius’ shoulder in turn and huffs a huge, weary sigh. “Fuck,” he says on a hiccup that is close to a sob, if he had any energy for that sort of thing.  
  
  
“What can I do?” Sirius asks, rubbing a hand up and down his spine. It feels good, and Remus leans into it.  
  
  
“Just let me go this once.” Remus mumbles into the wool of Sirius’ jumper - his own stolen jumper. “I’m too tired to argue about it.”  
  
  
“You’ve used that one before.”  
  
  
“I’m _too tired to argue about it_ ,” Remus repeats, somewhat through clenched teeth.  
  
  
“Then I’ll save it for in two days time, shall I?” Sirius snaps exasperatedly. Remus has stepped out of his embrace, removed himself to turn back to the mantelpiece. “If we’re going to figure out a good place for you to go every month, we can’t keep leavinh it until the day before to talk about, because you get like this and there’s no having any sort of bloody discussion with you--”  
  
  
It’s quite loud when the figurine smashes against the doorframe just past Sirius’ left shoulder. It shatters into a surprising amount of pieces, and one ricochets off and clips Sirius on the forearm where it draws a little bead of blood.  
  
  
They’re both frozen in shock; Sirius stands poker straight, as though somebody has walked in and pressed their wand to his spine, and Remus’ holds his hands out in front of him like they were possessed for a moment and he doesn’t know what to do about it.  
  
  
“I’m truly sorry,” Remus says then in a quiet, croaky voice. He looks afraid and deeply upset with himself. “I’m not sure why I did it. A-are you all right?”  
  
  
Sirius nods, and the movement seems to unfreeze him from the spot. He pushes a hand into his hair and steadies his breathing for a few seconds before going to Remus and taking his face in his hands.  
  
  
They press their foreheads together and Remus squeezes his eyes closed.  
  
  
“I’m so tired.”  
  
  
“We’re going back to bed,” Sirius says consolingly.  
  
  
“Leave this where it is, and I’ll put it back together later.”  
  
  
“Without magic, you bastard,” Sirius laughs softly, and takes Remus by the hand to lead him back to the bedroom.

 

 

  
**********

 

 

March 1980 

“I think it might have been a bad idea,” Remus says from behind his cigarette. He picks tobacco from his tongue and wipes it on his trouser leg.  
  
  
“To which of your many bad ideas are you referring?” Lily asks through the window as she bends over a hamper, rummaging for a certain sequined dress she is determined to wear out tonight. She wore it the night before, but it’s new and she’s determined to get her wear out of it before she starts showing.  
  
  
Remus laughs to hide the stab of hurt. He probably doesn’t hide it well, because when she finally tugs the green dress from the depths of the hamper, she comes to him at the window and smiles softly.  
  
  
“I’m joking,” she says, even though they both know she’s sort of right, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “What’s a bad idea?”  
  
  
Before he can begin to answer she whips her current dress over her head, sniffs at the sequined one, and apparently satisfied with the scent, tugs it on.  
  
  
Remus manages to turn his head fast enough to avoid the sight of her underwear, but he regrets not lingering a little to see how round her belly is looking.  
  
  
“Moving in with him.” He grinds the stub of the cigarette beneath his shoe on the fire escape and clambers back through the window, shutting it behind himself.  
  
  
“Is it not the same as at school?” Lily asks innocently, and Remus has to scoff.  
  
  
“No, it’s not the same as school. We’re alone in a flat where we can go at each other in all manner of ways at any moment of the day.”  
  
  
Remus picks up her discarded dress from the floor and throws it into the hamper for her.  
  
  
“I threw an ornament at him the other week in a fight, then we had a nap, woke up and fucked until I had to leave for the full.”  
  
  
“Fucking hell,” Lily laughs, but she seems appropriately scandalised as well.  
  
  
“We’re acting like it all turned out fine in the end, but it’s like papering over rot. It’s going to come through sooner or later, and I’d rather rip it all out and have done. I’m too exhausted for it.”  
  
  
Lily stops in the middle of the room and puts her hands on her hips. “What’s the damn problem? Are you telling me you hate each other’s guts, because that’s bullshit.”  
  
  
“No, I--” Remus starts firmly, but finds himself lost. “I can’t explain it properly, but it’s… me, I think.”  
  
  
“Oh, Remus,” she says softly, but he wishes she wouldn’t because he wasn’t particularly feeling sorry for himself until she said his name like that.  
  
  
“I’m hard to live with, I know that-”  
  
  
Lily opens her mouth here to interrupt, but he ploughs on.  
  
  
“For a lot of reasons that really shouldn’t be overlooked just because of the glaringly big one, but it’s that one that I think is causing the problem-”  
  
  
“ _Remus_ ,” she presses, but he’s gaining a certain frantic speed now.  
  
  
“-because school was _so_ different. He’s never had to live with it this up close before, so there are things he hasn’t had to consider until now, and I can see him struggling with it. And most days I don’t have the strength to explain it all to him because it’s enough to bloody live it than be his fucking tutor as well. So we fight, and I try not to resent him; we just blame it on the wolf and plod along, but he’s realising it’s all uglier than he thought- _I’m_ uglier than he th--” he’s cut off when Lily slaps him across the face.  
  
  
“Oh, Jesus!” she shrieks, puts one hand to her mouth and the other to Remus’ red cheek. “Oh, shit, that was harder than I meant to, Remus!”  
  
  
“I’m going to trust that I deserved that,” he laughs nervously because he knows she meant well. He was rambling hysterically.  
  
  
Once she sees that he’s not upset, she holds him by his chin and fixes him with a stern gaze.  
  
  
“I hope you feel better getting all of that out, but if I catch wind of you calling yourself ugly ever again, I’ll slap you for real. Are we clear?”  
  
  
“I promise to only do it in my head,” he says sardonically, so Lily points a warning finger at him.  
  
  
She waits a beat and then finally turns away to fetch her shoes. "Well, you’re the only one thinking it," she tells him over her shoulder as she goes. 

 


	14. April '75

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ll have all the girls coming after you to find out how it happened.”
> 
> The mirth slips from Remus’ face as quickly as it arrived, and he begins to fidget with the pebble in his hand. “That’s partly what I’m concerned about.”

April, 1975

Remus is kicked out of the Quidditch match barely an hour in because he won’t stop yelling increasingly aggressive variations of “put the ball in one of the fucking hoops, Potter!”  
  
  
McGonagall gives him a look of exasperation as he shuffles past to exit the stands, but he’s sure she was also trying to suppress a laugh when she finally snapped and told him he had to leave, so he doesn’t take it to heart.  
  
  
He trudges through the sludgy remains of the path back up to the castle, but makes a detour toward the lake to see how thick the ice is and give himself an excuse to crunch through the still untouched snow on the lawn.  
  
  
The crush and squeak of it is so satisfying that Remus almost forgets about how cold he is.  
  
  
He kind of likes being cold - it’s a bracing sort of pain, different from the aching kind he experiences every month - so he doesn’t wear gloves, and hardly flinches when he crouches down to touch a finger to the sheet of ice spreading away from him at the shore.  
  
  
He presses until there’s a tight creaking, but the ice doesn’t give, even at its thinnest by the tip of his shoe.  
  
  
He lifts a stone that remains untrapped by the ice and stands to await his stalker.  
  
  
They've trailed him up the soggy path from the pitch, and he listened as they paused to watch where he was going first before following across the lawn.  
  
  
He’s fairly sure it’s Sirius, but it could be Lily.  
  
  
“Do you want to go skating?” Remus asks as they approach, before he really knows who it is, because the question stands regardless of that fact.  
  
  
When he turns, however, he is surprised to see Peter stood with his hands stuffed deep inside the pockets of his worn bomber jacket, his shoulders gathered up around his ears in lieu of a scarf.  
  
  
“Oh,” Remus says with an accidentally disappointed lull that makes him instantly feel like a shit. “Sorry, Pete, I didn’t hear you,” he lies to try and cover for it.  
  
  
Peter gives him a tight, freezing smile and shuffles closer to stand beside him at the lake edge, eyeing the barren expanse of it warily.  
  
  
“I’d rather not. I’m hopeless at it. I’d be on my arse, straight through the ice and in the fucking jaws of the squid before you could blink.” He sniffs in a way that Remus can’t argue with, and then adds, “But don’t let me stop you.”  
  
  
Remus hums like he somewhat understands Peter’s fears. “Well, you’ve rather put me off it now.”  
  
  
“No, I haven’t.” Peter says, and when Remus turns to him he is grinning, with a  knowing twinkle in his eye.  
  
  
“No, you haven’t,” Remus admits. “But I’m not going on my own, am I?”  
  
  
He huffs a laugh and his breath clouds up in his own face like smoke.  
  
  
They stand there for a peaceful moment wherein they listen to the distant roar of the quidditch game.  
  
  
The wind snatches the sound off in the opposite direction so it’s not so intrusive and a fair enough replacement for the absent lapping of waves on the lake shore.  
  
  
Peter’s teeth chatter so that he doesn’t hear Remus at first when he speaks again, and has to ask him to repeat himself.  
  
  
“I said, I’m already deep into Resident School Freak territory without being the weirdo who goes skating on his own while everybody else is at a match.”  
  
  
There’s a little grim smile on his face, but Peter knows this is his signature self-deprecating expression.  
  
  
He sighs softly and steps in toward Remus to look up at his face. “It’s not that bad, Moony.”  
  
  
Remus turns to give him a grateful smile, but it’s still small and unhappy.  
  
  
“Well it looks bad in the mirror, so-” He stops abruptly and twists his mouth like he’s holding back a sob or some words he’s thought better about saying.  
  
  
When Remus had taken the gauze off in front of the bathroom mirror that morning he had sighed heavily at the sight of it - lurid, but nowhere near as grisly looking as immediately after and in the days before Pomfrey's stuff had started taking effect.  
  
  
When Peter realises he isn’t going to finish he shakes his head in answer and says, “It might look a bit, you know, _dire_ right now while it’s healing, but then it’ll look cool. I promise.”  
  
  
Remus rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitches, encouraging Peter to grin back at him.  
  
  
“You’ll have all the girls coming after you to find out how it happened.”  
  
  
The mirth slips from Remus’ face as quickly as it arrived, and he begins to fidget with the pebble in his hand. “That’s partly what I’m concerned about.”  
  
  
“What, girls?”  
  
  
“Well,” Remus starts, but then he realises it’s a stupid question and tuts instead. “No, I mean people asking me about it and bringing it up all the time.”  
  
  
Peter makes a motion that if his hands were out of his pockets would be a palm smacked to his forehead in demonstration of how dumb Remus is being currently. As it is, he makes an awkward flapping gesture and almost takes his own eye out with the zip on his jacket.  
  
  
“You’re thinking about this the wrong way, Moony. You’ve the chance to make up a whole epic story if you wanted to. Say you rescued someone from a runaway train, or, I don’t bloody know, use your imagination!” Peter purses his lips and considers if the next part is too harsh, but ploughs on anyway. “It’s just like you to mope about it for all eternity, is all I’m saying. How about you just have fun with it for once?”  
  
  
Remus’ mouth moves for a moment in silent protest, and then he frowns in dismay.  
  
  
“I don’t mope,” he grumbles, to which Peter opens his arms wide to gesture their present location and emphasise the correlation between the two.  
  
  
Remus’ frown just deepens and he throws the pebble out across the lake in the way one would skip a stone. As it goes bouncing across the expanse of ice it chirps in resonating echoes around the opening, and while Peter stands to watch it til its last skip, Remus turns and begins the trudge back up to the castle.

 

 

  
  
**********

 

  
  
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”  
  
  
Remus is rather meticulously screwing the nib back onto a fountain pen, being careful to avoid repeating such mistakes as allowing it to throb a bead of ink all over his second attempt at Charms homework.  
  
  
He sits, barefoot and uniform in disarray, with his parchment and notes spread out in front of himself on the bedspread, and mirroring him immediately to his right is Sirius, with a foot or so already completed of his own essay.  
  
  
If any attempt is being made on Sirius’ part to discreetly stare at Remus, he is doing a terrible job, so as it is Remus barely completes reassembling his pen before he has to say something about it.  
  
  
“Like what?” Sirius replies, so predictably that Remus manages to quote him at the exact same time, making Sirius’ cheeks flush with indignation or humiliation. He does still manage to smirk at the trick of it, despite.  
  
  
“Fuck off,” he tells Remus, and then leans over to take the fountain pen from between his fingers.  
  
  
Remus grins back and gives up the pen, but it’s not the first time, is the problem.  
  
  
It feels like every quiet moment between them now, he can sense when Sirius’ gaze settles on him, like a touch, and Remus will look up to catch the tail end of one of these indecipherable stares.  
  
  
The first time it happened, over a detention within which they were tasked to hand polish the suits of armour along the third floor corridor, Remus had just told a horrendous joke and mildly reduced himself to tears of laughter. He saw Sirius’ expression first in the reflection of the plate armour, and then turned to witness that which has since been unreadable on Sirius’ face.  
  
  
“It’s like this-” Remus explains, and attempts to imitate the intensity of it, albeit with some lighthearted exaggeration.  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head as though he has no idea what Remus is referring to, but he fidgets with the pen in his lap.  
  
  
A silence slips between them as Remus watches him carefully.  
  
  
“I know what you’re looking at,” he begins.  
  
  
Sirius raises his head almost lazily. “No, you don’t.”  
  
  
Remus lifts an eyebrow.  
  
  
“You think I’m looking at your scars.” Sirius points at his own chin as though he has to qualify which scars, when the only others almost never see the light of day.  
  
  
“And you’re not?” Remus challenges. There is an unmistakable air of confession to Sirius’ reply and suddenly Remus needs to know the depth of it; it sets his heartbeat thrumming in his fingertips, and rushing in his ears.  
  
  
He watches with his face partially turned away, like he’s afraid to look at Sirius head on, poised to turn and run.  
  
  
He barely sees Sirius shake his head. It’s slow and slight, and it feels like Remus is being told something very particular with the gesture.  
  
  
When he looks up into Sirius’ eyes his suspicion is confirmed, and with a certainty he has rarely felt in his life Remus knows that Sirius wants to kiss him.  
  
  
It comes over him like divination; he knows what the press of Sirius’ soft lower lip is going to feel like against his own and how he’ll taste, and he licks his lips in anticipation, but before either of them can even entertain the idea of leaning across the space between them on the bed there is a clatter behind the dormitory door.  
  
  
A moment later, James and Peter walk in and Remus jumps as Sirius’ head jerks up, a forced smile on his face to greet them both.  
  
  
Remus takes a deep breath and begins to gather his notes, decides to redo the essay tomorrow instead, but before he shuffles off the bed with his armful of parchment, Sirius holds out the fountain pen.  
  
  
“Keep it if you’re still using it,” Remus tells him.  
  
  
Sirius shakes his head and hands it over. “I was just looking because I like it,” he says pointedly, and then James is calling for his attention from across the room.

 


	15. Jan '75 + July & Nov '81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “ _What’s my alternative?_ ” he had said, implying that his choice was Sirius or nothing. Sirius and everything that comes with it, or nothing at all.

July 1981 

“We have to trust Dumbledore.” Remus is pinching the bridge of his nose, which Sirius knows to be a signal that he is causing him a headache.  
  
  
He says it in a final tone, the culmination of an argument that has been going for months now, albeit one not voiced aloud but straining wordlessly between them as they read the headlines, accept their orders, count their losses.  
  
  
“All we’ve done ‘til now is ‘trust Dumbledore’, and look at where it’s gotten us. We’re most of us dead, and if we don’t do something else it’ll be all of us. It will be James and Lily and Harry--”  
  
  
“Now it matters,” Remus mutters, almost under his breath.  
  
  
Sirius catches it and bares his teeth in disgust. “Christ, is that what you think of me?”  
  
  
Remus lowers his gaze to the carpet, ashamed at the thought. Of course he doesn’t believe it.  
  
  
“You know more than anybody how much I’ve done,” Sirius argues. “Who was there picking up the pieces of Marlene and her entire family? How dare you say I haven’t cared up until now--”  
  
  
“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Remus says desperately, and he looks it. “I know, I know that’s not true. I’m just- I don’t feel like ‘drastic times call for drastic measures’ is the right way to go about this. It’s piling risk upon risk, and we don’t know half the things we’re even up against! Dumbledore is our only reliable source, we have to trust that he knows what’s to be done.”  
  
  
Sirius scoffs. When Remus looks up he sees a grim, humourless smile on Sirius' face and he’s shaking his head.  
  
  
“He’s not all you think he is.”  
  
  
“What do you know about him, Sirius? All you’ve learned about the man is from school and jobs passed down in The Order, you don’t know--”  
  
  
“ _Oh_! You know him much better than that, do you? Heart-to-hearts when he was locking you up in the shack once a month, was there?” Sirius sneers.  
  
  
Remus huffs a mirthless laugh at the effort to hurt him with the mention of his transformations. “I’m definitely working with more than you think _you_ have, yeah.”  
  
  
Sirius gets up from the table and paces in the small space between it and the bookcase behind.  
  
  
Remus is still leaning against the back of the sofa but he’s been picking at the skin around his nails the entire time and when he looks down now sees that he’s managed to draw blood from two of them.  
  
  
He can’t remember the last time they had such a serious discussion.  
  
  
Now that he thinks about it, Remus isn’t sure they’ve ever broached the subject of the war so openly like this. It makes him feel nervous, as they toe the increasingly fine line between heated debate and full on row.  
  
  
Finally, Sirius sighs heavily and lays his palms flat on the table. He stares at the backs of them for a long minute and then says carefully, like he’s breaking difficult news; laying out facts for Remus as clearly as he can manage; “We’re his pawns.”  
  
  
“Don’t be dramatic!” Remus snaps. “We know what we’re here for. What we signed up for.”  
  
  
Sirius points an accusing finger. “If you’re implying there was any sort of choice to it; you’re talking shit.”  
  
  
“No, of course there wasn’t a choice,” Remus concedes quickly, “but we’re not completely without agency, is what I’m trying to say! We know what needs to be done and we’re willing to do it, but we _need_ Dumbledore. We’re blind without him.”  
  
  
“Oh my God!” Sirius presses both hands over his face and groans. When he raises his head again he looks pityingly across at Remus. “That’s because he _keeps us_ in the dark on purpose. How can’t you see any of this?” he asks, bafflement and frustration clear on his face. “Talk about blindness, Remus - you’re spot on.”  
  
  
Remus tries to bite back his flaring anger, continues by saying, “I’m talking about having _faith_ in his--”, but Sirius barks a harsh laugh at the word and it cuts him off.  
  
  
“Can you even hear yourself? This isn’t a fairytale; it probably won’t end happily ever after.”  
  
  
“ _Don’t I fucking know it_!” Remus growls back. His eyes flash with anger and Sirius has to hold steady in the sudden rush of it coming.  
  
  
“Can _I_ hear _my_ self?” Remus goes on, incredulously. “You’re damn right it’s not a fairytale, and yet here you are, running off like you’re everybody’s knight in fucking shining armour. _Here’s Sirius to save the day!_ ”  
  
  
“I’m not playing a knight in shining armour, I’m just-”  
  
  
“Nobody else can do it but you?” Remus says, a hint of mockery in his tone. It hits the mark. He sees it in the way Sirius narrows his eyes, and tries to brace for the retort.  
  
  
“Who’s left out of us all to do it? Who’s left but me?” Sirius bites back. “ _You?_ ” he asks viciously, and Remus feels it to the fullest effect despite seeing that he was walking into the path of it.  
  
  
The breath goes out of him.  
  
  
Curiously, his mind goes to the time when he threw the ornament across the room at Sirius and the way Sirius had frozen in shock in response.  
  
  
He remembers the feeling of utter regret on his part and recognises it on Sirius’ face now, but more horrifying is the realisation that to be on the receiving end is like looking suddenly at a complete stranger.  
  
  
_Who are you?_ Remus wants to ask. “Thanks,” he says instead, in the tone of someone who has just had certain suspicions confirmed.  
  
  
And he leaves.

 

**********

 

  
  
November 1981 

“What’s my alternative?” Remus remembers asking of James once, in a conversation about his relationship with Sirius.  
  
  
Even James, of all people, had barely understood it, and only now does that seem telling.  
  
  
“What’s my alternative?” he had said, implying that his choice was Sirius or nothing. Sirius and everything that comes with it, or nothing at all.  
  
  
_Well_ , he thinks now, as he sits in the chair opposite Dumbledore and feels like he is dying, _this was my choice_.

 

**********

 

   
January 1975 

Two and a half weeks back after Christmas, the foursome of Gryffindors are travelling the halls for map reconnaissance when Number Two on the list of Five Things Most Likely To Get Sirius Expelled is spotted walking toward them down the corridor.  
  
  
James is the first Marauder to spot the disaster, and alerts Remus to it by muttering gravely under his breath the word “ _fuck_ ”.  
  
  
Remus joins James in a hurried attempt to divert them all from the path to certain confrontation, when the pair are trumped by Peter who, perhaps wisely, simply takes the brief seconds to impact to say, “Now, Sirius, think about Hogsmeade.”  
  
  
Sirius glances up in confusion and immediately locks eyes with his brother, Regulus, who has stopped dead in the corridor fifteen feet ahead.  
  
  
They’re the type of Pureblood siblings who strike the observer as unmistakably brothers when you are considering one separate from the other - the same high cheekbones from Walburga, the shapely jaw of Orion, and those sharp eyes distinct to all in the Black line - but when stood side by side they seem to drift in and out of likeness, as though at best they are merely distant branches on the same family tree.  
  
  
Regulus looks startled for a moment, but then tips his chin up haughtily and defiantly when he seems to remember that he is flanked by several Fifth years whom the Marauders know _very well_.  
  
  
“Oh, it’s your embarrassment of a brother and his cronies,” Lucius Malfoy spits delightedly, like he has been waiting for such an encounter for a while now.  
  
  
There's only three other Slytherins accompanying him today, and Sirius notes that they're all the sort not worth remembering the names of. He can't seem to decide if he's disappointed or thankful for his brother's sake that Severus Snape isn't one of them.  
  
  
Sirius grins widely in response and walks towards Regulus.   
  
  
He puts a hand on his shoulder but speaks across him at Lucius. “The word you’re looking for is ‘friends’, Malfoy. I know it’s a difficult concept for you, since you have to bribe your henchmen to follow you around, but it’s when somebody actually _likes_ you and wants to hang around with you of their own accord.”  
  
  
“Well, it looks like _you_ can't get your brother to hang out with you for love _nor_ money.”  
  
  
Sirius grin slips, and when he finally looks at Regulus he finds he’s being glared at.   
  
  
He promptly shrugs his shoulder out of Sirius’ grip to emphasise Lucius’ words, and the hurt is so raw on Sirius’ face that Remus feels it in himself and it makes him angry.  
  
  
“What are you doing with these arseholes?” Sirius hisses at Regulus.  
  
  
“You’re one to talk,” Regulus sneers and his gaze flicks over to the other Marauders.  
  
  
A feeling of revulsion washes over Remus as he glares back. That uncanny likeness to Sirius flickering in and out of Regulus’ various expressions makes him feel uncomfortable and he longs to look away, but it holds him.  
  
  
“And who is it you think I should be making friends with? As if I give a shit what you think anyway.”  
  
  
Sirius scowls to hide the shock of his brother’s hatred. “People your own age. What’s exciting about the same bunch of Pureblood pricks you see when you’re at home? Jesus, just try making friends with some  _normal_ people.”  
  
  
“Yeah, take a leaf out of your brother’s book and make friends with Fatty, Four-Eyes, and the poor kid.”  
  
  
“Get _fucked_ , Malfoy!” Sirius snaps.   
  
  
It’s overlapped by James shouting, “Oh, fuck off!”, but it doesn’t lessen the impact. It’s fighting talk, and almost simultaneously they all go for their wands.  
  
  
James hovers were he is like back up. Remus touches the back of Peter’s arm to both comfort and discourage his involvement, and then steps past them both.  
  
  
Before he can take the five paces down the hall to reach Sirius, three spells have been fired off, and then finally he manages to tug out his wand and does his Prefectly duty to disarm them all.  
  
  
“Fucking hell,” he says somewhat wearily in the stunned silence, once the two wands have landed with a clatter at his feet.  
  
  
He gazes between Sirius, whose blood is welling from a shallow gash on his neck, and Lucius, who is holding a severed clump of his silky blonde hair and looking livid.   
  
  
“Are you both after being suspended? Because that’s where you’re headed. You’ve each landed a blow, so let’s leave it at that, shall we, and all just move on?”  
  
  
He bends to pick up the two wands, and when everybody in the vicinity looks like they’re satisfied with how far this has gone, Remus holds each out to its respective owner.  
  
  
Sirius takes his first and looks somewhat chastised, but Lucius snatches his wand from Remus’ grasp and immediately wipes the wood down on his robe.  
  
  
Remus rolls his eyes and goes to step away again.  
  
  
“I’d better not get a disease from this now. Merlin knows what they catch in the hovels they’re from,” Malfoy mutters conspiratorially across at Regulus.  
  
  
He hadn’t been one to pull his wand out during the scuffle, looking nervous and uncertain about getting involved, and now he’s just standing there like he’s tired of the entire exchange and wishes to leave.   
  
  
Remus thinks for a second he sees a little regret in his eyes, but then he smirks at Malfoy’s comment and the flare of utter revulsion returns.  
  
  
“Oh, shut up, Lucius, you inbred fuck,” Remus says mildly and then there’s a crack as Malfoy’s fist connects neatly with Remus’ nose.  
  
  
Remus hears Peter’s gasp accompany the bolt of pain that shoots behind his eyes, and he takes a single step back as the knowledge that Lucius Malfoy just punched him sinks in.  
  
  
He tastes the blood in his mouth and with a clarity borne of knowing for once exactly how he is going to spend this pure and resolute anger, Remus spits it at Malfoy, and in the moment when Lucius reels in disgust, Remus goes after him.

 


	16. Jan '81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s surprised by himself at how full of Sirius the surface of his thoughts are, and he knows he wouldn’t give a shit at any other time, but to have a complete stranger - an enemy, at that - sift through them harshly makes Remus almost ashamed of himself.

 

Remus looks down at his shaking hands and wonders how he even managed to get the cigarette lit.  
  
  
Two minutes earlier he had stumbled into the house in a daze, tripped down the hallway and hastily shut himself in the bathroom.  
  
  
As he sits hunched over with his back pressed to the tiles beside the sink the tremors rack through his body. He tells himself in panicked whispers to stop trembling, but his body doesn’t listen.  
  
  
He wants to cry but he’s still too stunned for emotion.  
  
  
Perhaps it hasn’t all quite hit him yet, so he just blinks at the faded plastic bath panel across from him, and tries to absorb what just happened.  
  
  
That’s when the doorknob turns suddenly.  
  
  
Remus jerks even though he knows it will only be Sirius, and because they’re idiots and don’t have locks on the bathroom door, Sirius easily lets himself in.  
  
  
He’s silent for a moment when he clearly thinks he’s looking at an empty bathroom, but then quickly notices Remus’ knees to his immediate right, and sinks to the floor beside him in alarm.  
  
  
“Fucking hell, Remus! Where have you _been_ ?”  
  
  
He takes Remus by the shoulders and looks down into his face.  
  
  
“I-I--” Remus stutters, shocking himself with the inability to speak and looking terrifyingly disoriented in a way Sirius has never seen him before - not even waking up after full moons.  
  
  
Sirius tries to squeeze his shoulder and nod encouragement in a controlled and reassuring manner, but it’s possible he looks as terrified as Remus does right now, hands frantic and desperate as they grip him back.  
  
  
“I w- I was--” Remus starts, but has to take a gulp of air. “I got attacked.”  
  
  
Sirius’ stomach lurches, and he slumps further onto the bathroom floor, drags Remus into his arms and holds him tightly.  
  
  
Over his shoulder, Remus reaches up to discard the abandoned cigarette in the sink, and finally with both hands free they can cling to one another.

 

***

  
“Oh my God, are you hurt?” Lily yells, striding directly out of the fireplace and over to Remus, before taking his face in her hands.  
  
  
He’s been startled out of a daydream, sat on the sofa, cradling a steaming cup of tea, and he can’t remember at all what he was just thinking about.  
  
  
Lily peers down at him a little stricken, inspects his eyes, pushes his head from side to side and tips his chin up, doing all the routine checks.  
  
  
“N-no, I-- I mean, not _physically_ , no--” he manages to get out and makes a feeble attempt to bat her hands away.  
  
  
Lily stops manhandling him then, seemingly satisfied for the moment, and just frowns down at him. She even whimpers a little bit, before engulfing him in a bear hug.  
  
  
“Jesus Christ, what _happened_ ?”  
  
  
She releases him once she realises he can’t very well respond to her interrogation when his face is pressed firmly against her bosom, so she lets him go.  
  
  
He sits up and runs a hand through his hair, attempting to form a coherent reply.  
  
  
Lily sits down on the sofa, but she’s on the very edge so as to reach out and put a hand on one of his.  
  
  
“I can’t really remember properly,” Remus says, shaking his head.  
  
  
Lily hums a gentle noise of understanding.  
  
  
“But Sirius did say-” she starts quietly, carefully, “something about, about Legilimency?”  
  
  
Remus wonders when Sirius had time to tell her this kind of detail, when he had seen the hastily scrawled message that was sent out by owl to summon, and it wasn’t so informative as that.  
  
  
“Yes, quite the mental prodding and poking.” He tries a light and nonchalant laugh but it definitely comes out sounding hollow, and Lily frowns harder at him.  
  
  
Remus seems to grasp that it’s not passing, and lets his forced grin slip away.  
  
  
“I feel like… my mind has been raked through with greasy fingers. I feel _wrong_ . Like, everything has been nudged slightly out of place in there.” He touches a finger to his temple and then looks down at the hand and it still shakes slightly. “ _Violated._ ”  
  
  
Lily presses a hand over her mouth, possibly to hold back a sob, and Remus thinks that’s fair. He’d probably like to have a cry about it himself, actually, now that he’s thinking about it.  
  
  
As if on cue, he sighs deeply and with a mix of impatience and relief, he finally feels that there’s some sort of a normal reaction on the horizon.  
  
  
He leans into it, feels it begin to well in his chest. It itches up the back of his throat, and he has to gasp for breath for a second, and then it’s coming.  
  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans, and only naturally then, it’s like he can’t stop.

 

 

**********

 

 

 _Remus feels out of breath, exhausted and elated both at once._  
  
  
_He groans with the pleasure of it, and Sirius raises his head to ask if he likes that. He nods, panting, and Sirius does it again._  
  
  
_“Yeah?” he asks again, and a frown creases Remus’ brow, but it’s concentration; the effort of focusing all of his attention on this one task._  
  
  
_He nods again and says, “Yes.”_  
  
  
_The word stretches out in his mouth, and he calls out in desperation._  
  
  
_Sirius laughs breathlessly above him and leans down to kiss his neck-_  
  
  
  
**  
  
He knows he groans aloud by accident and then the memory is dropped abruptly in disgust, discarded to prod for another. Sick humiliation wells in him, but he barely has time to process it.

**  
  
  
  
_“You told me once that the time Lucius Malfoy punched me at school turned you on,” Remus says, leaning over the end of the bedstead taking unnaturally large bites of an apple._  
  
  
_Sirius is lying with his head near this end so that Remus, peering down at him, is the wrong way up and blocking out the light from the unshaded bulb in the centre of their ceiling._  
  
  
_“What? No, I didn’t,” Sirius says, entranced by the movement of Remus' mouth, wondering if a kiss right now would taste like cider._  
  
  
_Remus barks a laugh of protest and props himself higher on his elbow. “Liar! You definitely did. You said that and then just talking about it led us into groping on my bed. It was like, sixth year or something.”_  
  
  
_“Fifth year,” Sirius corrects him, reaching up to steal his apple but struggling with the depth perception and almost poking Remus in the eye._  
  
  
_Remus smirks with satisfaction and puts the apple into Sirius’ hand for him._  
  
  
_“What’s your point?”_  
  
  
_Remus shrugs noncommittally and focuses on licking juice from his thumb. Ironically, Sirius doesn’t think Remus aims for it to be a particularly sexy act, and_ yet _._  
  
  
_“Are you trying to seduce me?”_  
  
  
_“Doesn’t seduction usually imply that you haven’t already - you know -_ had _the person, in various and numerable positions and locations?”_  
  
  
_“You make me feel seduced a-fresh each time, Remus,” Sirius simpers and takes a bite of the half-eaten apple. There’s something about the way Sirius sinks his teeth in where_ _Remus has already bitten that strikes Remus as incredibly arousing, but perhaps that’s just because he’s presently gagging for it._  
  
  
  
**  
  
“- _sus Christ!_ ” He gasps, coming out of it like he had been holding his breath the entire time.  
  
  
He’s surprised by himself at how full of Sirius the surface of his thoughts are, and he knows he wouldn’t give a shit at any other time, but to have a complete stranger - an enemy, at that - sift through them harshly makes Remus almost ashamed of himself.  
  
  
Perhaps it’s a blessing, because he knows what kind of thing they’re after; what they’ll continue until they find, so he braces for the dive.  
  
**  
  
  
  
_“Anyway, the point is, Moony, you needn’t be embarrassed because we’ve known the whole time. You can forgo embarrassment.” James stretches a leg out beneath the table to nudge Remus in the shin and make him look up. “Tell you what’ll make you feel better - if you dish some dirt on Sirius!”_  
  
  
_“Erm-!” Sirius says shrilly, but Remus raises his head and looks a little less red._  
  
  
_“Oh, nice one!” Peter agrees, closing the paper and turning in his seat to give Remus his full attention._  
  
  
_Remus glances at Sirius, who is looking affronted to the point of removing his hand from Remus’ back where he had been rubbing comforting circles._  
  
  
_Then a grin pulls at the corner of Remus’ lips, and he looks positively wicked with the opportunity._  
  
  
_“_ Well _-”_  
  
  
_Sirius quickly lunges, clamps a hand over his mouth immediately, and throws his weight on top of Remus so that they both go careening off the sofa, taking the cushions with them._  
  
  
_There’s a brief scuffle, which James and Peter laugh raucously at as they watch, before Remus tugs away the fingers clamped across his mouth, and feeling vindicated now after this assault, begins yelling Sirius’ dirty little secrets aloud._  
  
  
_Remus is belly laughing so hard that he impedes his own words as much as Sirius does, trying to tackle him into submission. Sirius tries tickling and wriggling his ice-cold fingers up under Remus’ jumper--_  
  
  
  
**   
  
Dropped.  
  
  
He can almost feel the disappointment and irritation, but his mind feels too churned to remember to brace this time.  
  
  
Anyway, it turns out there isn’t a method for bracing for such a carelessly penetrating dig through another person’s mind, and Remus’ stomach turns as they claw too far down in desperation.  
  
  
It’s like being punched in the diaphragm and then having your head dunked immediately beneath water, and he is abruptly thirteen years old again.  
  
**  
  
  
  
_It’s as though watching himself from within, as if sitting inside and seeing the movie of it play out through the windows of his eyes. Completely removed._  
  
  
_The sun isn’t up but his mind has drifted into the gap where the wolf is beginning to slowly ebb back out, and he’s watching it beat his soft, human fist against the warped wood of  the boarded up door to the Shack._  
  
  
_There’s a shocking amount of blood and his hand and/or fingers appear to be broken in a way that makes his still half-animal mind throb with words like ‘mash’ and ‘pulp’, but he’s hasn’t got his stomach back enough yet to be made to feel sick by it._  
  
  
_There’s the pain though - of course, nothing can dull that. What would be the fun in a werewolf with that taken away? He’s forced to stand there until it all drains from his blood and his hand is returned to him._  
  
  
_It drops to his side finally and Remus does the only thing left possible and promptly passes out._  
  
  
  
**  
  
His stomach roils and he throws himself forward to vomit on the ground between his knees.  
  
  
He can see the pattern arising now. Anxieties. Confessions. Secrets. That’s what they’re after.  
  
  
Find the shame and the things hidden with effort and break them open, spill them out to better look at.  
  
  
They don’t even wait for him to sit back up, and Remus thinks he hears himself cry out.  
  
**  
  
  
  
_"Let’s play Never Have I Ever,” Sirius says immediately upon sitting down, prompting everyone at the table to let out a collective groan._  
  
  
_Remus feels he has to point out that Sirius hates that particular game since he only came under the condition that this was going to be a quiet one._  
  
  
_Sirius raises his glass and stares rather pointedly in James’ direction as he says, “It all depends on the company.” With that, he shoves James’ pint closer to him across the table and then digs an elbow into Peter’s side._  
  
  
_Peter looks at Remus in askance, and simply receives a shake of the head and a sympathetic shrug._  
  
  
_“Never Have I Ever kept something from my best friend,” Sirius says firmly without further preamble. H_ _e holds his pint deliberately to one side where it tips precariously toward Peter’s lap as an uncomfortable silence descends upon the table._  
  
  
_He’s raising an eyebrow expectantly at James, who doesn’t touch his drink but narrows his eyes back at Sirius._  
  
  
_They only arrived ten minutes ago, Remus thinks wearily, and goes to roll his eyes at Peter but finds him watching the exchange so intently that Remus manages to take a sip of his drink to check how strong it is and put it down again without him noticing._  
  
  
_For the record, it’s not strong enough for this shit._  
  
  
_“Is there, perhaps, something you’d like to_ talk _about, Sirius?” he asks across the world’s most intense staring match._  
  
  
_“_ Well _\--” Sirius begins, but finally James cuts in._  
  
  
_“How about Never Have I Ever had it off at a funeral?” It comes out demanding and a little on the loud side so that Remus feels forced to be the one give a panicked glance around the pub. He lifts his glass and takes a long gulp as he checks for eavesdroppers.  
  
  
When he turns back Peter is looking at him with an accusing eye. _ _Remus fakes confusion and tunes back into the argument at the sound of his nickname._  
  
  
_“Well at least Moony’s an honest man about it,” James is saying, gesturing to Remus and then turning the hand on Sirius. “Shouldn’t you be joining him?”_  
  
  
_“What?” Sirius asks, as though scandalized by the notion. “What are you implying?”_  
  
  
_James purses his lips, unimpressed. “I’m not_ implying _anything, actually- I know you both did it, there’s no point pretending.”_  
  
  
_“Spy on us, did you?”_  
  
  
_“I didn’t have to, did I? I’d seen everyone off and then heard what I thought was one of you bloody crying under the stairs and came to look. I mean, really, Moony, you make the saddest noises when you’re--”_  
  
  
_Remus, mortified since James had pointed at him directly, suddenly chokes on his drink and spills it down his front. “Who are you having a go at - him or me?” he asks, indignantly._  
  
  
_“Erm!” Sirius holds his hands out, questioning Remus as to just whose side he’s on._  
  
  
_“Look,” Remus attempts placatingly, mopping at his shirtfront with a napkin, “we're sorry. Please don’t- just, please don't think we were being disrespectful.” He pats his jacket and to further pacify him hands James a cigarette across the table. James frowns but he puts it in his mouth and leans forward for Remus to light it as well._  
  
  
_He takes a long drag, before sighing and saying, "People deal with grief in strange ways," and Remus is so grateful for the reprieval that he sits back and forgets to fish out a cigarette for himself, although he needs it desperately. His face is still warm and he feels like a thousand eyes are on him._  
  
  
_He sort of wants to ask if James was joking about the sad noises thing, but he’d rather the conversation moved away from this now._  
  
  
_Besides, he realises, this line of questioning was a detour from Sirius’ initial interrogation, and when he looks over he reads it on Sirius’ face, that he’s all too ready to pick up where they left off._  
  
  
_“_ So _," Sirius says encouragingly, “when were you going to tell us about--_  
  
  
  
**  
  
Remus pushes back against it as hard as he can and the memory stutters.  
  
  
This is it, he thinks, startled into scrambling desperately for the scraps of knowledge he has on occlumency techniques, but trying to get at it is like barging down a narrow hallway alongside somebody else. This is the type of shit they’re here for and he’s not going to give it up easily.  
  
  
He’s fighting for it, panicking, and suddenly he remembers.  
  
  
Drop it.  
  
  
He just has to let go. Let go of it; all thoughts, all feelings; all of it.  
  
  
Go blank.  
  
  
The only other time he has tried this was in a classroom and it was barely successful - just enough to get a passing grade. He takes a deep breath and swears to fucking brush up on this once he’s out of here.  
  
  
The other consciousness slips out of him so fast and unceremoniously it makes him retch again, but this time when he tips over his vision refocuses just in time to catch himself on hands and knees.  
  
  
Remus knows he may be an idiot for getting into this situation, but by God he’ll get himself back out. They’ll not give him enough time to pull out his wand and try to attack them, he knows he’ll be dead before he tries it, so he isn’t going to.  
  
  
He doesn’t wait to finish retching and it hinders him in the long run, but he simply presses his fingers against the familiar wood and apparates out.  
  
  
He lands on his side in Hogsmeade high street, then does it again before anybody can fathom what they’ve seen, and lands alongside a puddle of his own sick by one of the bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath.

 


	17. Aug '79 & Oct '81

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius surprises them all by picking Remus as his partner instead of James, and the shock of it somehow obscures the madness of sending two rookies out alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: mention of a lot of blood and life-threatening injuries.

August 1979

Following the announcement at the Order meeting, an entire year is spent attempting to liaise with various groups of magical beasts and beings, and they’re left at the end of it without any new allies.  
  
  
Dumbledore has to acquiesce his previous decision preventing the eager youngsters of the resistance from being brought in for active duty.  
  
  
Once on the inside, Remus quickly learns that the so-called “ _talks with magical creatures_ ” were nothing more than a pair picked entirely at random, literally traipsing into the path of whichever creature they’d been given intel was in the particular area at the time, and lecturing them on the importance of their involvement in the expanding war.  
  
  
He practically cringes in his seat during the first briefing they sit in on where the subject is brought up. He keeps his mouth shut and marvels at the obliviousness of those around the tables finding it highly suspicious and frustrating that none of the creatures feel any inclination whatsoever to assist in a crisis that so far has only troubled witches and wizards.  
  
  
He leaves, however, feeling uncomfortable about how many times he had glance across the room and found Dumbledore’s gaze fixed on him during the discussions.

***

  
  
Remus curses himself for his naivety at thinking there would be some sort of initiation, or training, or even just a quick briefing, but they’re sent out on their first mission just a month in.  
  
  
Sirius surprises them all by picking Remus as his partner instead of James, and the shock of it obscures from them the utter madness of sending two rookies out alone.  
  
  
In hindsight, Remus realises this is a testament to the fucking shambles the Order is in; how spread thin and desperate they are.  
  
  
It goes tits up from the start, when they stumble directly into the middle of a dodgy dealing of a dark artefact in a shop on Knockturn Alley. There isn’t even supposed to be contact at this stage, just some simple reconnaissance, and suddenly they’re being chased down by a group of Death Eaters towards the outskirts of the enchanted shopping district, threatening to tumble into the Muggle part of the city.  
  
  
They run full tilt down a street that leads directly out onto a main Muggle road, managing to keep side by side with one another, and Remus feels giddy with adrenaline and their ability to stay just out of reach of the curses being thrown at their backs.  
  
  
He's just daring to believe they’re going to escape from this, when Sirius makes the absurd decision to stop Remus from running through the glamour veil into the Muggle road by stepping out in front of him.  
  
  
Remus moves against the hand on his chest regardless of Sirius’ feelings on appearing out of thin air in front of a crowd of midday Muggle shoppers, and Sirius goes to tell him something presumably incredibly important to counter this decision when a ball of dirty yellow light streaks past Remus’ head.  
  
  
He flinches, ducking slightly with his hands up over his head, and when he opens his eyes Sirius seems to crumple in front of him. He goes down hard and hits the cobbles on his side, just short of the veil, before Remus can even put a hand out to catch him.  
  
  
Panic kicks Remus hard and he lunges forward, goes scrambling on his knees to Sirius’ side and turns him onto his back to see Sirius clutching at his neck with both hands covered to the wrists in his own blood.  
  
  
Remus’ mouth goes dry but he shoves a hand in without missing a beat. “ _Jesus Christ_ ! Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit--” He feels it under his fingers; a hole about the size of a Sickle.  
  
  
He’s no stranger to blood, of course, but the sight hits him like a bludger out of left field, and his stomach turns. He thinks maybe there’s something to the spell that hit, or perhaps it’s just psychosomatic, but there’s a sickly smell to it that makes him have to breathe heavily through his mouth - take great panting breaths as he fights Sirius’ hands to take control of the pressure to the wound.  
  
  
“Let me,” he insists, looming over him and trying to stop shaking. “ _Let_ me, Sirius. Oh god. Oh god.”  
  
  
Sirius is grabbing his wrists to hold him in place and staring up at him wide, desperate eyes, and somehow the most terrifying thing is his silence. His mouth is opening and closing without any sound, and his breath is making rasping and clicking noises that Remus can see is the result of blood in his mouth.  
  
  
“Sirius- Sirius, we have to go-- I can’t--” he stutters, trying to keep a grip on Sirius’ neck, but the blood is making his hands slip, and he can feel the thick pulse of it all escaping through his fingers. “We have to apparate.”  
  
  
Sirius tries to shake his head, manages to look even more terrified, and Remus knows, he _knows_ it’s dangerous and against all notion of apparation safety, but what choice do they have with Death Eaters on top of them?  
  
  
“Yes. Yes,” he pants, not letting Sirius’ hands clawing at his arms and the pleading look in his eyes deter him. They might die mid-apparation, of course, or on the rug in their apartment in a pile of dismembered limbs, but it’s sure as fuck a better death than they’d be offering themselves up for here. “We have to, we _have to_ -” he tells Sirius fiercely, and flinches when another curse goes flying past his right shoulder.  
  
  
He slides one hand from Sirius’s neck and without tearing his gaze from his paling face, fumbles for the wand out of his pocket. He drops it onto Sirius chest and presses his hand over one of Sirius’ on top of it. “Breathe,” he warns, tightens his grip, and disapparates them both.

***

  
  
They apparate inside the flat onto the floor directly behind the sofa, with Remus’ knee’s slamming onto the threshold of the door frame.  
  
  
They both gasp for breath and then the grip of Sirius’ fingers around Remus’ wrists slackens. He’s looking up towards Remus but his eyes have become unfocused and his mouth has stopped moving, and Remus sort of wants to lie down and do the same right about now but he knows there’s a bottle of dittany in the bathroom cabinet.  
  
  
His throat is raw as he summons the bottle from down the hall and flicks the lid off with one hand.  
  
  
“This will work, this will work,” he practically chants to himself and pulls his hand away before pouring a careless amount of it directly onto the wound and holding his breath.  
  
  
As it sinks in he tries not to think about how _huge_ it is, because _God, it’s so big_ and there was just _so much blood._ Sirius’ face is so pale and his fingers are twitching beside his head like he wants to do something but can’t manage it, so Remus plants his hand back over the wound as if this will have some affect and has to rip it back off immediately when the dittany burns his skin.  
  
  
“Shit!” he hisses, as a minty smoke emits from the flesh. When he looks closer, panicked, he can see it beginning to knit everything back together.  
  
  
Within seconds Sirius begins to stir until he’s regained enough of a blood flow to be able to reach up and grab Remus’ arm. He rasps the word “fuck” a few times, blinking rapidly as he comes back to himself a little, and when it becomes fully apparent to them both that he’s no longer dying, they stop grappling each other and just stare in wonder at one another's faces for a moment.  
  
  
“ _Holy shit!_ ” Remus finally gasps, pulling Sirius into sitting position so he can move closer. He practically climbs into Sirius’ lap and kisses him firmly on the mouth, tasting blood and ignoring it.  
  
  
“Oh fuck. Fuck, Remus,” Sirius tells him, awestruck, between frenzied kisses.  
  
  
"I know, I know," Remus nods.  
  
  
After three days recovery at St. Mungo’s, Sirius returns to the flat and they proceed to have the best sex Remus recalls ever having. He lays Sirius back on the bed for fear of causing him to over-strain, and does all of the work.

 

***

  
  
Remus’ last mission of the war sticks with him for the obvious reason, and all the mundane little details haunt him as much as all of the horrific and remarkable ones.  
  
  
He leaves a pack of werewolves on the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire, and feels himself hunted by the same Death Eaters who brought Dumbledore to make the decision to remove Remus from London and send him out into the wilderness in the first place.  
  
  
He spends a day and a half heading South in the hope of leading them far enough to apparate out and not have to worry about them turning back to find the pack. Evening has fallen by the time Remus decides he’s run probably as far as he should on a badly healed ankle, and comes upon a farm tucked into the trees, up against a river.  
  
  
He could pass by without making contact, or he could warn the residents of the danger that will follow by on his heels, and at least give them time to prepare for the worst.  
  
  
Remus scopes the perimeter, limping on his bad foot until he edges around the corner of an outhouse and has to step back again when he sees the back door to the farmhouse wide open, the light pouring out into the yard. It reaches to his feet and he can’t step out now without being bathed in it, but then he hears a bark and his heart sinks.  
  
  
They’ve got a fucking farm dog, of course they have.  
  
  
He has to wait until the thing has come bounding around the corner and he has a good angle on it before Remus raises his wand.  
  
  
He’s just going to silence it - or stun it, depending on its disposition - to stop it from revealing his position, but as he begins the wand motion and opens his mouth to speak, he is startled by the press of something pointy just above his right ear; he knows it as the unmistakable feeling of another wizard pressing their wand to your head.  
  
  
“Drop it, or I’ll put you down,” a gruff voice tells him, and the dog barks excitedly at Remus, and he knows it’s ridiculous but swears there’s a smugness to it, which is why it makes him feel a little better when the man behind him then snaps, “Shut up, Danny.”  
  
  
Remus tips his wand so that it’s not directed at the dog, but he doesn’t drop it, and opens his other hand in submission.  
  
  
“I’m just--” he starts, but he’s cut off when the wand at his head goes jabbing into his temple.  
  
  
“Your mate’s dead now, do you wanna go the same way?” he’s told sharply, and Remus feels a hand close around the back of his coat, right at the scruff of the neck, so as to shake him.  
  
  
He extends his hand out in front of him and lets his wand drop to the dirt, and the hand releases him as the man begins to walk around to the front to see his face, all the while his wand is pointed at Remus’ head.  
  
  
“Yeah, not so fucking rowdy now, are you lot? Now your mate’s been snuffed out.”  
  
  
When he’s finally stood in front of Remus, the guy is backlit by the light coming from the farmhouse, and he looks built like the barn behind him, definitely able to beat some, if not all, of the shit out of Remus if he wanted to. And he sounds like he wants to.  
  
  
Remus makes another valiant attempt at defusing the situation.  
  
  
“Sir, I’m- sir, can I just explain who--?” he starts this time, but he can tell he’s not really being listened to, as he watches his wand be picked up, turned over in a large, hairy hand, and contemplated, before being hurled, forcefully, into a field over to the right. Remus’ heart sinks, and he grits his teeth as he mutters a weary “fuck” under his breath.  
  
  
“Yeah, you are fucked, son. Now get out here.” His captor takes a few steps back into the yard, into the light, beckons Remus forward with him, but Remus can see his face now and he does not look like a friendly guy, so he stays in the dark beside the shed trying to quick-think his way out of this one.  
  
  
“I said _get here_!” He barks again, pointing at the ground by his feet.  
  
  
When Remus doesn’t budge, the guy stomps back over and grab a fistful of Remus’ shirt to drag him into the yard. He uses his brute strength to thrown Remus to his knees in front of him, making him hiss in pain.  
  
  
“Christ!” the man spits. “You don’t hardly know how much shit you’re in. Now, you can either comply with me or wait until the Aurors arrive, it’s up to you, but I’ve been waiting near two years for one of you shits to cross my path, so I dare you to make a wrong step, son, because I will gladly show you what I think of your lot.”  
  
  
Remus contemplates that this gentleman may have a screw loose for all the nonsense he seems to be talking, but just at that moment a figure steps into the doorway of the house.  
  
  
“David?” A woman says, warily. “David! Who’s that there?” She sounds frightened, and this annoys David, because he shouts at her to go back inside, but she’s persistent to know who Remus is.  
  
  
Remus is curious to know who David thinks he is as well, so he leans to one side in an attempt to be seen better by David’s probable wife. In an effort to appeal to her good will Remus bares his open hands to her, and she steps down into the yard.  
  
  
“Who is it?” she repeats, almost desperate now, and David grabs Remus by the scruff of the neck again, to drag him forward and show Remus off.  
  
  
“One of them followers. Dark Eaters, or whatever the fuck they call themselves,” David says, and Remus, for some reason, feels relief. “Or, I guess you aren’t no more, since your boss has popped his clogs.”  
  
  
The wash of relief is stalled, and the hair on the back of Remus’ arms and neck stand on end.  
  
  
“W-what?” he croaks, and he sounds shocked and upset, which is probably why David beams down at him in a malicious way.  
  
  
“He’s _dead_ ,” David says, and relishes the word in his mouth. He practically has tears in his eyes, and Remus can feel them welling in his own. “You don’t have a Lord no more, because he’s been killed.”  
  
  
“H-how? _When_? _Who told you?_ ” Remus asks, frantically, and he’s clawing at David’s hand on his neck now, desperate to get all of the information, to confirm its authenticity. He needs to _know_ this to be absolutely true.  
  
  
David shakes him roughly. “With his own killing curse, apparently. Your great master fucked himself over--”  
  
  
“I’m not a fucking Death Eater!” Remus roars, and David starts, reels back a little from the outburst.  
  
  
“That’s what they all say,” he snaps, but Remus thrusts his arm into David’s face, offers it up to be looked at, and though reluctant, David pushes his coat sleeve up and peers down at the bare, freckled arm in his hands.  
  
  
“Right here,” Remus says quickly, prodding his forearm. “There’d be a tattoo of a- a skull and snake - you _know_ they all have them.”  
  
  
David lets go of him abruptly, and Remus slumps to his hands and knees in the dirt. “He could still be one,” he tells his wife, continuing to point the the wand at Remus, whose mind is racing.  
  
  
There are so many questions to be answered, but these people are in the middle of nowhere and he couldn’t trust that they had the full story. He knows he has to speak to Dumbledore, so he raises his head and looks imploringly at the couple.  
  
  
“I need you to let me use your Floo,” he begs.  
  
  
Barely fifteen minutes later, Remus stumbles out into Dumbledore's office and finds it empty and silent, but for the whirring and clicking of various artefacts scattered around the room.  
  
  
He kicks over one of the tables in frustration and ignores the items that smash on the stone flagging at his feet; just grabs another handful of floo powder and dashes it into the fireplace.  
  
  
When he steps out into his flat feeling sick and frantic, he leans against the wall in the dark and catches his breath before standing up and realising there are three Order members sat on his couch.  
  
  
They watch him in silence as he pulls his coat off, walks into the kitchen for a glass of water, and returns, gulping it down. He places it on a nearby shelf when he’s done and then gives Moody a nod.  
  
  
Moody stands.  
  
  
"It's all of them, Remus," he says plainly.


End file.
